Accessibility Statement

Pressbooks is committed to ensuring that our software is accessible to users and readers. We understand accessibility and inclusive design to be holistic, proactive processes that must be included in our product specifications and development workflows. We also recognize that as a publishing tool, we have an opportunity to facilitate the production of accessible content. With this in mind, we have worked with accessibility and inclusive design experts at OCAD University’s Inclusive Design Research Centre, the University of Washington’s DO-IT Center, BCcampus, the University of Texas at Arlington, and elsewhere to identify areas for improvement.

Because Pressbooks is built on WordPress, we benefit from WordPress’ Accessibility Coding Standards, which require that “All new or updated code released in WordPress must conform with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 at level AA.” We have been tracking the development of Gutenberg, WordPress’ block editing interface and will not integrate Gutenberg with Pressbooks until the accessibility issues raised in its 2019 audit have been resolved.

VPAT and Compliance with Accessibility Standards

In 2019, we published our first Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT), which documented our compliance with WCAG 2.0 at the A and AA levels. Recent audits have focused on ensuring that Pressbooks Create and our reading interface comply with WCAG 2.1 guidelines at level AA. Our marketing site typically includes the most recent version of our VPAT and other relevant documentation to assist with enterprise procurement.