Need a closed caption-like action in Storyline? Done!

Has this happened to you?  Your audience has the capability to hear audio, but some are in a location where they'd prefer not to.  AND...you don't want to use the Storyline player buttons.  What to do, what to do...hmmm.

Storyline provides a few options to handle these situations.  In our case, we didn't want to use the player buttons, so we decided to do it our way--which Storyline totally supports!  Cool, huh?

We decided to provide our learners with the option to leave the text hidden, or to 'see' the text as the audio plays--their choice.  The solution also allows them to change their mind at any time during the course.  We used two 'CC' buttons, a variable, and several triggers.

Our true/false variable was created and named 'CC'.

On each slide, we added:

• 2 slide triggers, 
• 2 'CC' buttons--identical in appearance, with 3 triggers on each button, and a hover state with instructions.

When layers were used, the 2 'CC' buttons were on the base layer and two triggers were added to the layer, identical to the slide layer triggers.

The text version of the audio was placed into captions which were set to an initial state of 'hidden' on each slide and/or slide layer.

Slide/Layer Triggers

  

When each slide/layer loads, the slide/layer triggers look  at the 'CC' variable to determine if the captions should be changed from 'hidden' to 'normal' state.

Button Triggers

Each of the CC buttons has 3 triggers:













The 'CC turn on' button is initially in the 'normal' state; the 'CC turn off' button is initially in the 'hidden' state.  As you can see from the triggers, clicking 'CC turn on' will set the 'CC' variable to 'true'; change the state of that button to 'hidden'; and change the state of the 'CC turn off' button to 'normal'.

The 'CC turn off' button works in the reverse, setting the 'CC' variable to 'false', changing the state of itself to 'hidden'; and changing the state of the 'CC turn on' button to 'normal'.

Test it out here.

Take a look at the .story file.

Would this idea work in your courses?