Manifold Accessibility

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

Accessibility Overview

Manifold is a platform for publishing books online that can be locally installed or hosted through Manifold. For our testing, we used the University of Washington's instance. As with PressBooks, the final accessibility of a published book relies on the author to use accessibility best practices. It should be noted that Manifold is grant funded and open source, so updates and responses to accessibility reports may depend on the availability of the incredibly small developer group.

In general, we have some reservations around Manifold's accessibility. With the small development staff, they are understandably unable to dedicate resources to continued development compared to PressBooks. The dark theme of the backend does possibly present a barrier to some users, and there are focus errors that made navigation frustrating. There is also a strong cognitive load issue around understanding the various aspects of the frontend and backend; even with an expert on call, our testers struggled trying to understand and use the site.

General Information

• Accessibility page
• Github page for reported accessibility issues
• Github page for reported general issues
• Github page for discussion around accessibility issues

Known Accessibility Issues

Keyboard Control

The keyboard shortcuts listed on the Accessibility page are standard keyboard navigation shortcuts. Manifold does not have any action-specific keyboard commands; however, Manifold does offer alternatives for drag-and-drop actions (select with spacebar, and use the arrow keys to move). There is also a Select a File alternative when uploading files to the project. If you use Manifold to host video (rather than embedding YouTube or Vimeo videos), there is no way to use the keyboard to access that video.

Color Contrast

Looking specifically at the backend/editor mode, we weren't able to find areas that required color discernment for navigation or inadequate color contrast. We did note that the fact the entire backend interface is white text on a black background may be difficult for some users to view. Usually, this is something that the user can switch between (light and dark modes). Not having the flexibility to choose may negatively affect a users experience.

In our testing, the backend was responsive to user-set browser defaults around colors (example: white background and black text by default), though it may affect your ability to easily use the site by sight due to the multi-pane view of the backend.

With some of the books that testers looked at, there were some reports of contrast errors, but these are the responsibility of the people who created those books. The issue around level 1 headers having consistent contrast errors was reported prior to our testing, and was fixed long after our testing was completed.

Focus Errors

At times, our testers experienced nonsensical focus errors. For example, after performing a search, tabbing to the results jumped the focus to the middle of the list, rather than the top. Sometimes the skip to main content would jump to the bottom of the page, or there will be secondary or tertiary landmarks that are not included with the Skip To options.

Annotating a Book

Manifold does not support an accessible alternative to annotating a book. You may be able to access some annotations using VoiceOver. There is a full explanation of this issue on Manifold's accessibility page.

Analytics page (backend)

The Analytics page was the most difficult to use with a screen reader and/or keyboard. The graphical statistics had some confusing language around them. For example, visually there is a graphic of a big 2 with a caption underneath saying "annotations created in 1 month 2 days", but audibly it’s confusing ("annotations level 3 list with two items has details 2 caption annotations created in 1 month 2 days has details 2 caption public").

You can use the keyboard to navigate the Analytics page, but whenever you go into Properties, you are instantly put into the Title form element. This skips the explanatory text, and has no audio component to tell you that you are editing the element before you start trying to navigate around (pressing H to navigate by headings just types the H into your title).

Texts Page (backend)

• Back to main Digital Accessibility Group page.