Questions answered by this guide
- What should I check before publishing a Storyline or Rise course?
- Is there one checklist that covers accessibility, quality, and engagement together?
- How long does a pre-publish review actually take?
- Do I need to re-check a course every time I edit it?
- What's the difference between this checklist and the Storyline or Rise Accessibility Checklist?
What you'll learn
- One short checklist covering accessibility, course quality, and course engagement
- Built to run in about 10 minutes, right before you publish
- Links out to deeper checklists for each specific area
Why it matters
Once a course is published, learners start using it right away. Fixing a problem after publishing means someone has to notice it, report it, and wait for a new version. Fixing it before publishing costs you a few minutes now instead of a support ticket later.
Example
A course that looks finished but isn't publish-ready
✕ Incorrect
A course is marked ready to publish because it looks done, consistent fonts, complete narration, clean layout. No one runs a checklist before shipping it. It goes live with three images missing alt text and one broken link to a resource PDF.
Looking finished and being publish-ready are different things. Missing alt text and a broken link are both invisible unless someone specifically checks for them, and by the time a learner hits either one, they've already had a broken experience.
✓ Correct
The same course runs through this checklist first. The missing alt text and the broken link are both caught and fixed in the same session, before the course goes live.
A short, deliberate pass catches exactly the kind of problem that's easy to miss just by looking at a finished-looking course. It costs a few minutes now instead of a support ticket, or a learner who quietly gives up, later.
Best practices
- Run this checklist after your course is finished, not while you are still building it.
- Treat each item as a yes or no question. If you are not sure, treat it as a no.
- Use the tool-specific checklists for a deeper pass on accessibility. This page is the fast, cross-topic version.
- Re-run this checklist every time you publish a new version, not just the first time.
Common mistakes
- Only checking accessibility and skipping course quality and course engagement.
- Publishing before a second person reviews the course.
- Assuming a course that passed once will still pass after later edits.
Practical checklist
- Every image has real alt text or is marked decorative.
- The course can be used with a keyboard alone, no mouse required.
- Captions or a transcript exist for narration and video.
- Text has enough color contrast to read easily.
- Every link works and opens the right page.
- Fonts and button styles are consistent from slide to slide.
- No leftover placeholder text or broken images remain.
- Slides are not overloaded with text.
- Reading level matches your audience.
- Interactions have a real purpose, not just decoration.
- A second person has reviewed the course.
- You have run an automated scan to catch what a manual pass can miss.
Frequently asked questions
Is this checklist enough on its own?
It is a fast, high-level pass. For a full accessibility review, use the Storyline or Rise Accessibility Checklist. This page is meant to catch the basics across all three areas in one sitting.
How long does this take?
About 10 minutes for a typical course, once you know your course well.
Do I need to check every item for every course?
Yes. A course that was fine last month can break after new edits. Treat each publish as a fresh check.
What if my course only needs an accessibility check, not quality or engagement?
Use the Storyline or Rise Accessibility Checklist instead. This page is for a full, cross-topic pass.
How often should a published course be re-tested?
Every time you publish a new version, not on a calendar schedule. A single edit, a new slide, a swapped image, an updated link, can silently break something a full pass would have caught. Treat re-running this checklist as part of publishing itself, not a periodic check you schedule separately.
Related Guides
Storyline Accessibility Quick Checklist→
A fast, practical pass through your Storyline course before you publish it, 20 checks, about 15 minutes.
Rise 360 Accessibility Quick Checklist→
A fast, practical pass through your Rise course before you publish it, 19 checks, about 15 minutes.
Course Quality Checklist→
A focused checklist for the polish-and-consistency issues that make a course feel unfinished, broken links, mismatched styling, duplicate content, separate from accessibility.
Course Engagement Checklist→
A focused checklist for whether a course is actually easy to learn from, content density, reading level, and whether interactions serve a real purpose, separate from accessibility and course quality.
Alt Text Guide→
Alt text is a short written description of an image that a screen reader reads aloud in its place. Write what the image communicates, not what it looks like, and keep it under about a sentence.
Keyboard Navigation Guide→
Keyboard navigation means every interactive object in your course, buttons, links, quiz answers, layers, can be reached and used with Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter, and arrow keys alone, with no mouse required.
Color Contrast Guide→
Normal-sized text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 against its background, and large text needs at least 3 to 1. This is checked with a contrast checker tool, not a visual guess.
What Can A11yCheck Review Automatically?→
A11yCheck's automated scan reliably detects structural and technical accessibility issues, like missing alt text, low contrast, and broken keyboard access, but it can't judge instructional quality, learning objectives, or whether an image's description is actually accurate. Here's exactly where that line sits.
A11yCheck's Review Methodology→
A11yCheck reviews a real, rendered Storyline or Rise course, not its source file, using a headless browser to open the published output the way a learner actually would, then runs three separate passes: Accessibility (deterministic, WCAG-grounded), Course Quality (deterministic, structural), and Course Engagement (advisory, AI-assisted). Here's exactly how each one works, and where the line between automated and human review actually sits.
See a Sample A11yCheck Scan Report→
This is a walkthrough of an illustrative sample course, not a real customer's course, built to show exactly what a real A11yCheck report contains: how findings are grouped by pillar, what a finding actually looks like, and what the report explicitly does not claim. Run a free scan on your own course to see a real one.
Course Review Checklist: A Role-Based Process for Reviewing eLearning→
Before You Publish Checklist is one person's fast pass right before hitting publish. This is the process a course goes through to get there: who reviews what, in what order, before anyone signs off. Use this when more than one person touches a course before it launches.
Accessibility Testing SOP: A Standard Process for eLearning Teams→
A repeatable process, not a one-time checklist, for how a team tests accessibility: who's responsible, what tools and methods to use together, how often to test, and how to document that testing happened.
SCORM vs xAPI vs cmi5: What Course Publishers Need to Know→
SCORM, xAPI, and cmi5 are the three publishing formats a Storyline or Rise course can export to. They're not interchangeable, each tracks different data and needs different LMS support, choosing the wrong one for your actual reporting needs causes real problems after launch, not before.
Instructional Design QA: A Practical Framework for Reviewing a Course Before Publishing→
Most instructional design frameworks (ADDIE, backward design, and similar) focus on how a course gets built. This page is about the moment after it's built, and before it's someone else's problem: how an ID reviews their own work with real distance, across five real dimensions, before handing it off.
Summary
Before you publish, run through accessibility, course quality, and course engagement in one short pass. Catching a problem now takes minutes. Catching it after publishing takes much longer.
Review your course before you publish it.
A11yCheck reviews Storyline and Rise courses for:
- Accessibility
- Course Quality
- Course Engagement
www.a11ycheck-dev.com