Electronic Accessibility
Accessibility Settings for Individual Elements in Storyline
Last updated: 5/21/2025
In Storyline, the accessibility tool visibility — Storyline's phrasing for whether an element is available to assistive technologies or not — and the alt text of individual elements are controlled through the Accessibility tab in the Size and Position panel (which can be quickly opened in Storyline through the Ctrl + Shift + Enter keyboard shortcut).
There are a few characteristics of these settings worth knowing for accessible design:
- Elements can have different settings in different states
- For example, an element could be visible to accessibility tools in one state and hidden from accessibility tools in another
- An element could have certain alt text in one state and different alt text in another state — very helpful for conveying statuses like unselected, selected and visited through alt text
- To change an element's state-specific accessibility settings, enter edit states mode, choose the state to edit and open the Size and Position panel
- Elements within another element's State can have their own accessibility settings; that is, if you place an element (child element) inside the state of another element (parent element):
- If the child element is visible to accessibility tools, assistive technologies will be able to read it and engage with it (if it's interactive)
- If the parent element is visible to accessibility tools, the child element may be read instead of the parent element, at the parent element's spot in the focus order
- If the parent element is hidden from accessibility tools, the child element may still be read by assistive technologies
- Groups have their own accessibility settings, separate from and in addition to the accessibility settings of individual elements within the Groups
- If a group is hidden from accessibility tools, its elements may still be visible to accessibility tools, depending on their individual settings