How to check a Storyline course for accessibility gaps before an audit
What an automated check of the .story file can verify, what it cannot, and how to get the list of gaps out of a course in minutes.
What to check
- Alt text on every meaningful image, and decorative images marked so screen readers skip them.
- Captions on audio, and on video.
- Slide titles present and unique, because screen readers announce them.
- Player controls: skip navigation, playback speed, play/pause.
- Reading order and focus order on every slide.
- Color contrast between text and background.
- Keyboard operation through every interaction, with no traps.
What a file check can and cannot verify
The .story file records alt text, captions, slide titles and player settings, so a tool that reads the file can report coverage for those precisely: which images have alt text, which audio has captions, which titles are blank or duplicated, which controls are on. It cannot judge whether the alt text is any good, and it cannot test what only exists at runtime: contrast, focus order, keyboard traps and video captions still need a person with a screen reader and the published output.
StoryAudit's Health Check is explicit about that line and stays on the file side of it. It gives you the coverage list so the person with the screen reader spends their time on judgment instead of counting.
The manual way
Open every slide in Storyline, open the accessibility settings on every object, note what is missing, repeat for every layer. For a 60-slide course that is several hundred dialogs. It also needs a Storyline seat, which the person doing the audit often does not have.
Do it in StoryAudit
Drop the .story file into Health Check. No Storyline license needed, and the file never leaves your browser.
- Alt text and audio caption coverage, listed by slide and object, with a separate CSV export of the gaps. Health Check → Accessibility
- Blank or duplicate slide and scene titles, and whether skip navigation, playback speed and play/pause are on for learners. Health Check → Titles and player
- Readability of the course's text as a whole: Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid grade level, a gauge of density rather than a judgment of quality. Health Check → Readability
- Waive a finding with a reviewer name and timestamp, and export a review record PDF for the audit file. Health Check → findings rail
See the accessibility section on the bundled sample course. No sign-up.
Open the live demo →Across versions and libraries
Compare shows an “Accessibility changed” banner between two versions, with the before and after alt text and captions, so a fix can be verified without re-auditing the whole course. Batch Check runs the accessibility coverage check across a folder and flags every course that fails a policy rule you set once.