Hi everyone,
I’m using KoboToolbox on https://kf.kobotoolbox.org and I’m trying to attach MP3 audio to each answer option of a select_multiple question (audio per choice).
What I did:
Built the form as an XLSForm
Added audio filenames per option in the choices sheet (tried both audio and media::audio columns)
Uploaded all MP3 files in Project → Settings → Media (filenames match exactly, no spaces)
Redeployed the form
Issue:
In the web form (Enketo), the audio for each choice does not show (no play button / audio controls next to the options)
When I inspect the HTML, I can see an element being generated for the choice, but it’s not displayed as a playable control
Question-level audio (e.g., a note with media::audio) works fine and shows a player
Questions:
Is audio-in-choices for select_multiple currently supported on Kobo web forms?
If yes, is there a specific recommended column format (audio vs media::audio) or any known limitations (e.g., appearance=no-buttons, randomize, choice_filter, languages) that would prevent the audio controls from appearing?
If it’s not supported / is a known bug, is there any workaround besides using “Note” questions above the select_multiple?
Thanks for the detailed report. This appears to be a regression (although I’m not sure when last it worked…). We are investigating and I’ll report back when I know more.
Presently I’m not aware of any workaround, other than perhaps sticking the audio on regular questions - eg on the select question itself (but not its choices) - which, as you observed, is working ok.
To followup on this, yes I can confirm this isnt working at present. You can add optional audio media, as well as images, to options in choice lists, but these will only appear correctly in KoboCollect; Enketo will show the images but does not display anything to play the audio. Thank you again for looking into it and bringing it to our attention.
As best I can tell, this did use to work in Enketo some time ago (eg label for select_one with just audio has no height · Issue #538 · enketo/enketo · GitHub, circa 2014), but this appears to be a relatively little used feature because I’ve not found any usage more recent, so it is rather difficult to tell when it ‘broke’. 
If this is something that you have used more recently, could you perhaps give me an idea of when it was last working for you; that might give us an idea of what might have happened in the interim when that caused these audio controls to now become hidden.
AFAIK there is no workaround for Enketo to get audio clips to appear alongside choice options. What you can do instead if you dont have a huge number of options, would be, as you suggest, to display a serious of Notes immediately before the select question, each indicating the specific audio for the following options. You can still include the audio in the choice list too, so that it will works as desired when run under KoboCollect; it just means KoboCollect will display the precursor audio notes too.
This is an example of a form which does both:
AudioChoices.xlsx (15.6 KB)
Running this form will show the notes with the audio for the following select options, which the user can then at least refer back to and play:
Note, if you run this under KoboCollect you will still get these notes - and the select options - now with both having the audio clips that can be played . put everything in a field-list to keep them all on one screen:
This is probably about the best you can do till the bug is fixed - you can track it here. [also see this github issue for the audio and image media attachments for my sample form above if you want to run it yourself].
Hi, we are building a new form and our client is asking for this functionality. We saw the source code and saw that it was hidden. It never worked for us before. We probably have to switch to a different platform if this functionality is not provided. The suggestion you offer would not work for us as this is for little children to fill out so it need to be as easy as possible. Any way the development team can put this functionality back? Thanks
@wayne_oz This is a high priority bug and we are actively working on a fix now. I’ll report back when I have a better idea of when it will be available.
Hi KoboToolbox, just checking any idea when this function would be available again? Thanks
