Pressbooks Accessibility Information
Pressbooks is publishing tool used to create, host, publish, and make available open educational resources (OER) to students and faculty. Pressbooks allows for the integration of OER with Canvas, including interactive elements using H5P.
Affected Users
Instructors with vision disabilities may encounter missing markup or incorrect labeling issues when using the editor interface with a screen reader.
Known Accessibility Barriers
The visual and text editor tabs are missing tab markup. Some items in the media library are incorrectly communicated as checkboxes. Only those using the editing interface (faculty users) may be affected by this accessibility issue.
H5P: Instructors using Pressbook's H5P tool should be aware of accessibility issues with certain content types. Content type recommendations are available here Links to an external site.. Instructors should avoid using any of the options that are red and/or marked “no” in the column labeled "Accessible."
Alternate Access and Accommodations
If a faculty user experiences an issue with the editing interface, they can contact the product owner, Lauren McKeen McDonald (lauren.mckeen@northwestern.edu), Open Education Librarian, to resolve it. Lauren trains faculty and instructors on the use of Pressbooks and can identify any potential accommodations that will need to be made, and either work with the user directly or contact Pressbooks for assistance.
If Lauren is unavailable to assist, Aerith Netzer (aerith.netzer@northwestern.edu), Digital Publishing Librarian, is available to work with users on any accommodations they may need.
Students: If a student is unable to access the course materials using H5P in Pressbooks, they should contact their instructor. The instructor can contact Lauren McKeen McDonald to determine if the issue is due to H5P limitations or content authorship.
Additional Support
If these workarounds are not sufficient to provide access for a specific individual, accommodations may be necessary. To address accommodation needs:
• For student(s), contact AccessibleNU at accessiblenu@northwestern.edu
• For faculty, staff, or the general public, contact the Office of Equity at accommodations@northwestern.edu