The Accessibility Assist Author Tool, powered by Editoria11y, is available as an add-on for Enterprise Networks. This tool helps authors identify and address accessibility issues directly within Pressbooks as they create or edit content. When enabled for a Pressbooks network, the tool becomes available for logged-in book authors, editors, collaborators, and administrators within every book on the network.

The Accessibility Assist Scanner Tool is additionally included as part of the full Content Toolkit bundle. If your network has the Content Toolkit enabled, and you are a book Administrator or Editor, you will see a scan feature at the top of the Content Toolkit > Accessibility Report page in the left sidebar menu of your book dashboard.

In this chapter, we’ll describe how to use the Accessibility Assist Author Tool as well as the Scanner Tool.

If you would like to activate Accessibility Assist on your network, please contact your account manager.

View Alerts

For logged-in book authors, editors, collaborators, and administrators, the Author Tool automatically checks content in the Visual editor as well as on any rendered webbook page, flagging common accessibility issues which can be addressed from the editor.

The tool checks for page structure that is meaningful for screen readers and search engines; text alternatives for images and media; meaningful links; and other, miscellaneous accessibility issues. (Please note that it does not flag design issues with color contrast.)

Each flagged issue, or alert, is marked with a tooltip.

Unambiguous issues are marked in red, with an exclamation mark in a circle.

Dismissible tips are marked in yellow, with a question mark in a circle.

Hovering your cursor over the alert tooltip — or using the tab key to navigate from one issue to the next, pressing the enter key while the tooltip is selected — opens a pop-up with a text description, providing instant feedback on the issue and how to resolve it.

A small control panel also appears in the bottom-right corner of the screen on every webbook page (and its corresponding Visual editor).

Within this control panel, the “Show / hide accessibility alerts” button allows authors to toggle between showing or hiding alert tooltips as they view the page. The button on the furthest right with a number or an arrow symbol, “Go to first / next alert,” allows authors to jump to the next alert tooltip on the page.

Additionally, users with the role of Administrator in a book have the option of entirely disabling accessibility alerts in the Visual editor throughout their book. They can do this by navigating to Settings > Editoria11y in the left sidebar of their book dashboard. There, under Basic Configuration, they can set “Check while editing content” to “Do not check while editing” and save changes. They can update this setting in the future if they’d like to restore accessibility alerts to the Visual editor.

Access Book-Level Reports

Book users with the role of Editor or Administrator, along with network or institutional managers, can also view a report of identified issues in a given book. This report is reachable from the Content Toolkit > Accessibility Report link in the left sidebar of the book dashboard (or from the aforementioned control panel on any Visual editor or webbook page, via the “Open site reports in new tab” button).

This book-level report includes:

• recent issues
• a summary of issues by page (sorted by which pages have the most issues)
• an overview of issue types (sorted by prevalence)
• recent issue dismissals

This report can also be downloaded as a CSV.

Scan Book

By default, the accessibility report is populated one page at a time as you – or other logged-in users with edit capabilities – open book chapters or the Edit page for specific book chapters.  But if your network has the full Content Toolkit enabled, then in addition to the Author Tool described above, you will also have access to the Scanner Tool. The Scanner Tool has the advantage of populating the accessibility report for the entire book in a single action.

As a user with the role of Administrator or Editor within a book, when you visit the Content Toolkit > Accessibility Report link in the left sidebar of the book dashboard, you will see an Automated Scan tool at the top of the page.

Using the Scan Book button here initiates a full, up-to-date scan of all pages in the book, providing a report that reflects the book’s current status when it comes to accessibility issues / alerts flagged by Accessibility Assist. Click the checkbox to request email notification when the scan completes. You can navigate away while the scan is in progress and return later to view the completed report.

Videos: Use Accessibility Assist

This video demonstrates how to use the Accessibility Assist Author Tool in Pressbooks.

This video outlines how to navigate the Content Toolkit > Accessibility Report page as well as how to use the Accessibility Assist Scanner Tool in Pressbooks.