How to Fix Keyboard Navigation in Storyline 360

Overview

Learners who can't use a mouse, because of a motor disability, a temporary injury, or simply a broken trackpad, rely entirely on the keyboard. Being clickable and being reachable by keyboard are not the same thing in Storyline. A custom hotspot or trigger can work perfectly with a mouse and be completely invisible to someone tabbing through the slide.

Step-by-step instructions

1. 1

   Put your mouse away.

2. 2

   Press Tab repeatedly through the slide, starting from the top.

3. 3

   Note every button, hotspot, or interactive object that Tab skips over.

4. 4

   For each one that got skipped, go to Slide, then Tab Order.

5. 5

   Check whether the object is missing from the list entirely, if so, it needs to be added.

6. 6

   Add it to the tab order in a position that matches where it appears visually.

7. 7

   Tab through the slide again to confirm you can now reach and activate everything.

Screenshots

Tips

• Test keyboard access as you build, not just at the end, it's much faster to fix one object at a time than to audit a whole finished slide.
• Once an object is reachable with Tab, also confirm you can activate it with Enter or Space, reachable and usable are two different checks.
• Storyline's built-in interactions (standard buttons, question slides) handle this automatically, it's custom-built hotspots and triggers that need manual checking.

Common mistakes

• Custom hotspots or triggers built without ever testing whether Tab actually reaches them.
• Assuming that because something is clickable, it's also reachable by keyboard.
• Testing keyboard access once early in development and not rechecking after later slide changes.

Why it matters

Learners who can't use a mouse rely entirely on the keyboard. Anything that only responds to a click is completely unusable to them.