Halloween-Themed Project: House of Inaccessible Horrors

Happy Halloween, readers!

I've been hearing about the Articulate community's E-Learning Heroes challenges for a while, and 3 days ago, I finally decided to check it out. Wouldn't you know... this week it was a Halloween-themed prompt! Well, I love Halloween, so clearly I had to participate.

The idea came to me very quickly, as I am very passionate about accessibility and always trying to learn more to create accessible content and experiences. I immediately knew I wanted to do a haunted-house-themed escape room. To organize the rooms, I decided to use the POUR acronym. Content must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Each word of the acronym has its own room to enter, and each room must be completed before receiving the key to exit.

Check out a short video sample of the experience!

I very quickly became carried away with ideas, and had to really limit myself to what I could create in just a few evenings to fit the challenge. I plan to expand on this project in the future and create some more interactive experiences in each room.

Parts of this learning experience are inaccessible by design. I have very mixed feelings about this, but this short training is really geared towards those who may not have issues accessing eLearning content like this. My goal was to help learning designers really think through their content in a different way.

So often I see learning designers and content creators talk about accessibility as though it hinders the experience they are creating. I truly believe that when accessibility is done well, it makes the experience better for EVERYONE!

If you are brave enough to enter, experience the full project here:

If you just want a quick overview, or any of this experience isn't accessible to you, here is my Project Outline with descriptions of scenes, narration, text boxes, and actions.

I would love to hear your feedback and answer any accessibility questions you all have. Let me know if there are any experiences you're hoping to see in the expanded project in the future!