PressBooks Accessibility

This page gathers the IT Subcommittee's resources and reviews of the accessibility of PressBooks. This page will be updated as new information is available or further reviews are conducted.

Accessibility Overview

PressBooks is a platform for publishing books online. Built off of WordPress, PressBooks offers online publishing in HTML, with options to make the book downloadable in PDF or EPUB formats. We only tested the authoring side and the public/reader side of PressBooks, and didn't do a deep examination of the PDF or EPUB outputs. As such, we can't comment on the non-HTML outputs available for PressBooks.

The PressBooks authoring side is generally accessible. We did not encounter any barriers. However, when it comes to the publishing/reading side of PressBooks, much of the accessibility of a PressBooks book is left up to whoever has authored it. If the author follows best practices, then the resulting book is accessible.

General Information

• Authoring VPAT (pdf)
• Reading VPAT (pdf)
• PressBooks' Accessibility Page
• PressBooks' Accessibility Standards and Commitments (pdf)
• Create Accessible Math in PressBooks and Canvas from Indiana University
• Add Mathematical Notation from the PressBooks accessibility guide
• University of Wisconsin's Accessibility Summary
• University of Washington's experience collaborating with PressBooks for greater accessibility

Known Accessibility Issues

Because so much of the final accessibility of a PressBooks book is up to the author, PressBooks and many universities offer free and open guides to creating accessible books:

• PressBooks's Make Your Book Accessible and Inclusive user guide
• University of Guelph's Making PressBooks Accessible
• BCcampus's Free Accessibility Toolkit
• University of Washington's Teaching, Testing, and Talking Accessibility

There are some differences between PressBooks.com and PressBooks.org, as well as between which templates you use for creating your PressBook.

• Different versions of PressBooks use different heading levels for call-out boxes and other visual text boxes, and will sometimes use no headers at all. You should test your book using a screen reader to make sure it makes sense.
• PressBooks.org has native MathJax integration, while PressBooks.com has WordPress's QuickLaTeX as the default for math rendering. You can also select which plugin you'd rather use in PressBooks.com. If you're using a university's installation of PressBooks, you will need to ask them what they recommend and/or have installed.

• Back to main Digital Accessibility Group page.