Chapter 9: Check for accessibility
Editoria11y
In Fall 2025, Pressbooks released a new plugin that will review your pages and content within for accessibility. Editora11y is a plugin developed by Princeton University. Hypothetically, if you implement the best practices outlined in previous chapters, you should have few issues flagged. However, we do recommend utilizing this plugin to review your book to ensure it’s in line with the new Title II regulations, or before publishing for public view.
Note that Editoria11y does not flag design issues (e.g., color contrast) or development issues (e.g., invalid ARIA). Editora11y will check the content and structure of your book, but some aspects will still need to be manually checked outside of Editora11y:
- Color contrast: Use the WebAIM color contrast checker.
- Heading levels: Editora11y will tell you if you’ve skipped a level, but you’ll still need to ensure you’ve got proper hierarchical structure with only one Heading Level 1 per page.
- H5P activities: The text surrounding the activity will be checked, but the activity itself will not.
- Create accessible activities
- Read on for info about the H5P checker
- Document accessibility & video captions: Editora11y will prompt you to review these, but will not check them directly.
- ARIA: website development issues.
There are two levels of flags: 1. High-priority/major issues (labeled with a red exclamation point) and 2. Items that need to be reviewed (labeled with a yellow question mark).
You can view the results of the Editora11y check in three different ways:
- Reader preview: When you visit the book while logged in as an author, editor, collaborator, or administrator, the public view will flag any areas of concern. Any edits to the content will still need to be made in the Editor view.
- Editor view: When you are viewing the content as an editor in the Visual Editor window, it will flag questionable content as it is written.
- Book reports: Handy for when the book is completed — you can view and download a CSV file that will list all of the flagged issues and what pages they are on, giving you the chance to prioritize what to fix and where.
As you work though the issues, you will have a few options available to resolve the issue:
Major issues (red flags)
- Fix the problem: Say it says that you skipped a heading level — you can resolve the issue by changing that text to be the correct heading level. Navigate to the Visual or Code editor to fix.
Manual reviews (yellow flags)
- Fix the problem
- Mark as ignored: This essentially lets you skip this issue for now. It will remove the flag for you, but not the rest of the editors.
- Mark as OK: You’ve reviewed the flag and have determined that there is no accessibility issue. Example: An image is flagged as having no alt text, but you know that the image is decorative and alt text is not needed. Choosing this option will remove this flag for all editors.
As you make your edits – don’t forget to save before moving on!
Watch a demo to learn more about using Editora11y in Pressbooks (video).
List of common errors flagged by Editora11y. Source: Editoria11y Accessibility Checker
|
Problem |
Solution |
Learn more |
|---|---|---|
|
Headings with no text at all |
Input text into heading section, or remove section entirely |
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|
Tables without header cell |
Select a row and change the cell or row type to “header” |
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Tables with empty header cells |
This indicates that cells have been made headers but there is no text within the cell |
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Document headers (“Header 3”) inside table cells |
Incorrect use of Header styles – change the text type back to paragraph and enter in the cell properties to made a header |
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Skipped heading levels (manual check) |
Double check your heading levels to ensure proper hierarchy (Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3) |
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Very long headings that might not be actual headings (manual) |
Change the text to be 2 – 3 words |
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Images without an alt element |
Edit the image to input an alt text tag |
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Images marked as decorative using an empty alt element (manual check) |
Review image to ensure it is decorative |
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Images with a filename as alt text (manual check) |
Change the alt text tag to something meaningful |
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Images with very long alt text (manual check) |
Review the alt text tag and make it shorter. |
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Alt text containing redundant text (manual check) |
Review the alt text and remove words like “photo of” or “picture of” |
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Video embeds, reminding the user to add closed captions (manual check) |
Review the video and check for accurate captions |
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Audio embeds, reminding the user to provide a transcript (manual check) |
Review the audio and check for an accompanied transcript |
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Social media embeds, reminding the user to provide alt elements (manual check) |
If you don’t have control over the social media post — consider writing the caption such that it includes contextual info |
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Embedded visualizations that usually require a text alternative (manual check) |
Review the visualization and edit the alt text tag as needed |
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Links with no text |
Edit the link to change the text to a descriptive title instead of the URL |
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Links with a filename as their label (manual check) |
Edit the link to change the text to a descriptive title instead of the file name |
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Links made of only generic words: “click here,” “learn more,” “download,” etc. (manual check) |
Edit the link to change the text to a descriptive title |
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Links that open in a new window without warning (manual check) |
Edit the link to change the text to a descriptive title to include the text [opens in a new window] OR Edit the link and uncheck the box for ‘open in new tab’. |
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Images in links with alt text that appears to be describing the image instead of the link destination (manual check) |
Edit the link to change the text to a descriptive title |
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Links to PDFs and documents, reminding the user to test the document for accessibility or provide an alternate format (manual check) |
Review the document for accessibility |
Review resources on document accessibility |
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Lists made from asterisks, numbers, and letters rather than list elements (manual check) |
Select the text in the Visual editor and select either Bulleted List or Numbered List option |
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LARGE QUANTITIES OF CAPS LOCK TEXT (manual check) |
Rewrite the text without caps lock on |
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Possible heading: suspiciously short blockquotes (manual check) |
Review text and determine if it actually needs to be a heading |
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Possible heading: short, all—bold paragraphs (manual check) |
Review text and determine if it actually needs to be a heading |
Microsoft Accessibility checker
When working within Microsoft products, you can use the Accessibility Checker to review your documents. This checker will review your document for color contrast, alternate text, table accessibility, and document structure (headings). This will help ensure that your documents (including PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook emails) are accessible and ready to be shared.
Word vs. Pressbooks:
Reminder!
If you’re using Microsoft Word to write your book with the intention of importing it into Pressbooks, how you format that file will be different than how you would normally use Word – namely, heading structure and how you will prepare images. The Accessibility Checker may flag these as errors, but because your end format will be in Pressbooks, you may not need to address them now.
Learning how to set up a Word document for accessibility will help you in creating other materials for your course.
Improve accessibility with the Accessibility Checker — Microsoft Support
H5P Caretaker
H5P Caretaker is a fairly new tool meant to review the content of your H5P activity to look for issues, including accessibility issues like alt text for images incorporated in the activity. If you plan on using H5P activities, consider looking into this tool.
NDLA’s H5P Caretaker — WordPress plugin | WordPress.org
H5P Caretaker Reference Implementation
H5P Caretaker plugin for WordPress released | H5P
H5P Caretaker — Pressbooks Forum
Additional accessibility checkers
