Introduction
Who deserves access to your eLearning courses?
Everyone, right? It’s kind of a no-brainer. Yet, we often develop learning experiences that exclude a significant portion of our learners—those with disabilities.
It’s not as if designers and developers are heartless beasts who think that people with disabilities deserve to be left out. Most often, it’s that we’re not sure how to develop accessible eLearning without compromising effective instructional design. Or we think it will be too much trouble or cost too much.
As I wrote into the Inclusive Learning Pledge, we don’t have to sacrifice good design for accessibility.
If you’ve been looking for some specific guidance about Storyline accessibility, this post is a good place to start. I’ll share a few techniques I use for creating Storyline courses so they’re more accessible to users with disabilities. And I’m including some links to additional information for learning more.
Mayer's Principles
At the core of Mayer’s Principles is the evidence-based assumption that people process information through two channels: auditory and visual.
Let’s add the caveat that Deaf or blind people may rely primarily on only one of these channels. (I’ve included the words “may” and “primarily” because disabilities are spectrums. Many Deaf people have some hearing, and many blind people have some vision.)
If you’re not familiar with Mayer’s Principles, this blog post from Digital Learning Institute explains them in a nutshell. The University of Hartford also has a useful one-pager. I’ve got it pinned to my bulletin board for quick reference when I forget which number is which. (Numbers are hard for me, y’all. Dyscalculia.)
For more depth about the research and application of these principles, I encourage you to grab a copy of the books Multimedia Learning and e-Learning and the Science of Instruction. (Links are included at the end of this post.)
The Multimedia and Redundancy Principles
Mayer’s research has found that people learn better through words and pictures than through words alone or pictures alone. This is known as the Multimedia Principle. The research also found that people learn better from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration, and printed text. This is known as the Redundancy Principle.
Storyline Accessibility for Multimedia
Application of these principles has led to the common practice of developing eLearning that uses images synchronized with audio narration. This kind of learning experience works well for many people without disabilities. But how do we make sure that it works well for all people?
Designing for Those with Hearing Disabilities
For learners with hearing disabilities, providing closed captions is a relatively easy solution. Storyline allows us to add captions to video and audio files or to import caption files.
Captions aren’t a perfect solution for everyone. For many Deaf people who use sign language, reading captions is using a second language, so it adds an extra layer of cognitive load that’s not ideal for learning. Providing interpreters would be the best accommodation for these learners.
For an example of a Storyline course that includes sign interpretation, see the Disability Inclusive Development course that we developed for The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Scissortail was a subcontractor to Encompass LLC, and we used their storyboards and visual design.
We included a screen at the beginning to allow users to choose their preferred interpretation: American Sign Language, Universal Sign, or none. Then we included the interpretation videos on a layer and displayed them using triggers. More on that in a bit.
Designing for Those with Vision Disabilities
Making multimedia content accessible for learners with vision disabilities takes a little more work, but probably not as much as most designers (and their budget-making bosses) are afraid of.
Accessibility of Timeline Items
Contrary to what I was taught many moons ago, screen readers don’t necessarily ignore items that aren’t at the beginning of the timeline in Storyline. But it might skip content that animates in later, depending on the timing. The best way to be sure that screen reader users are able to access all the content is to test with a screen reader.
Be sure to set the focus order so screen readers present the content in a logical order. Also remove items from the focus order that aren’t necessary for screen reader users, such as decorative images or any onscreen text that’s duplicated in the audio.
(Considering the Redundancy Principle, we shouldn’t be duplicating narration in onscreen text, except for displaying small amounts of text for emphasis.)
If the content is building on the slide as the audio plays, consider adding a hidden “skip animation” button at the beginning of your focus order that, when selected, allows the user to skip to the end of the timeline to see the finished content. This can be useful for many types of learners.
To Autoplay or Not to Autoplay
Because audio narration can overlap with a screen reader voice, the standard is not to autoplay any audio or video. However, for many course designs, this can lead to a poor experience for users who would prefer the media to play automatically and don’t want to select Play on every slide. All those extra clicks could even be an accessibility issue for users who experience pain in their hands with repetitive use. Surely there’s a happy medium, right?
To provide the best experience for all learners, we simply need to give them a way to control the media. We can do this by adding a user choice at the beginning of the course that sets a True/False variable and then adding a trigger to each slide that contains timed media (or on the slide master, if you want it to appear on every slide).
Layer Method
Doug Harriman described one way to accomplish this in his very useful eCourse Accessibility Checklist, which he shared during a TLDC event a few years ago. (See page 30 of the PDF for details.)
This method involves displaying a “Manual Play” layer if the autoplay variable is false. (That is, the user has chosen NOT to have media autoplay.) That’s the method we used to develop the course for USAID. The triggers for a sample slide of that course are shown below.
Basically, if a user chooses to have media autoplay, they’re shown a layer called “Autoplay.” But if they choose not to have media autoplay, they’re shown a layer called “Manual Play.” When they select the Play button on that layer, it opens the “Autoplay” layer.
Because learners also have a choice of sign interpretation in this course, we also used triggers on the autoplay layer to display the correct video based on their choice. Those triggers are shown below.
Note: This course uses a trigger to set captions to display by default. However, this can be done once using the Variables Manager instead. (Live and learn.)
Simplified Method
In a recent Storyline development, we adapted Doug’s technique and used a simplified method to avoid creating additional layers. Here are the steps we used:
- Create a user choice slide at the beginning with a True/False variable.
- Add a small Play button at the top of each slide (or to the Master Slide) that appears if the user chooses to manually play media (Autoplay = false).
- Add triggers to pause the timeline when the timeline starts (if Autoplay = false) and resume it when the user selects the Play button.
I’ll update this post with a link to the finished course when it becomes publicly available.
Text Alternative
For screens with a lot of animation, consider adding a link to a text alternative. I generally create this in a two-column table format, with image descriptions in one column and the narration script associated with each image in the other.
Sometimes, I use three columns to include a thumbnail of the image as well. I mark these images as “decorative” so the user doesn’t hear the same alt text twice. (The reason for providing a visual description rather than embedding alt text in the image is so users with low vision who do not use a screen reader can see the description.)
This kind of alternative can provide a more user-friendly experience, not only for people with vision disabilities, but also many neurodivergent people and people with cognitive disabilities. But remember that if you’re developing a text alternative for the entire course, it should also be engaging and interactive so it provides the same value for all learners.
Summary
We don’t have to sacrifice good design for accessibility. We can use sound instructional design techniques, including Mayer’s Principles, and make our courses accessible at the same time. The important thing is that we’re considering the needs of all our learners and not only the majority.
Be sure to check out the insightful interview with Richard Mayer on this topic done by elearningdesigners.org. It’s the first link in the resources list below.
If you enjoyed this post and would like to see more posts about Storyline accessibility, or videos demonstrating how to implement these tips, drop a comment below or send me an email.
Likewise, if you experience an accessibility problem with this post or the course linked above, please let me know!
Resources for Learning More
Mayer's Principles
- Interview with Richard Mayer: Mayer’s Principles and Accessibility
- Mayer’s Principles and Accessibility Book Chat Resources
- Mayer’s 12 Principles of Multimedia Learning
- University of Hartford 12 Principles of Multimedia Learning
- Multimedia Learning book by Richard E. Mayer
- e-Learning and the Science of Instruction book by Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer
As an Amazon Associate, I will earn a small amount if you choose to purchase a book using the above links. This doesn’t affect your price and helps to offset the cost of maintaining this blog.
Storyline Accessibility
- Tips for Building Accessible Courses in Storyline
- How to Skip Animation in Storyline and Be More WCAG Compliant
- eCourse Accessibility Checklist
- Achieving Optimal Accessibility in Storyline and Other eLearning Environments (TLDC session with Doug Harriman)
- 7 Ways Articulate Storyline’s Modern Player Is Better for Accessibility
Comments
Thanks for the feedback, Joe! I’m so happy you found it helpful!
Thank you for this! It reinforced some of the things I knew and practiced, and gave me ideas for updates going forward.