9 Pre-Accessibility Evaluation Review & Remediation
Before we send a book for the full accessibility evaluation, we manually review & remediate the book for obvious issues in the following areas.
Headings
- Ensure there are no missing headers
- Ensure there are no skipped heading levels
- Ensure no text is inappropriately tagged as a header
Tables
- Remediate layout tables (tag as role=”presentation” or re-format)
- Adding header cells & appropriate scope property where needed
- Replacing tables used for formatting with textboxes where applicable
Images
- Ensure images have descriptive alt text
Color Contrast (Text & Images)
- Check & remediate any color contrast issues that are visually obvious
Language Tagging
- This tends to be implemented near the end, when the book definitely will have no further new content
Lists
- Semantically tag content as lists if applicable
- Ensure there are no accidentally nested lists (relatively common in Pressbooks)
Links
- Ensure links are descriptive
- Ensure links do not open in a new tab without explicitly stating so
- Ensure file links include the file type
Audiovisual: Captions & Transcripts
- Compile lists of which videos need captions and transcripts.
- It is especially helpful to catch these early on in non-English language textbooks because the captions/transcripts must be approved by the authors.
CSS Solutions
Various accessibility issues are caused by authors using inappropriate HTML semantics to achieve a desired visual appearance. Some examples of this are:
| Desired Appearance | Accessibility Issue | CSS Solution |
|---|---|---|
| Large text (small-scale) | Non-heading text tagged as heading | style=”font-size: XXem” |
| Large text (large-scale) e.g., all text of a certain language should be larger | Non-heading text tagged as heading | Use :lang() CSS selector to scale up all text tagged as that language |
| Custom list markers | Non-semantic lists | CSS list-style-type or @counter-style at-rule |
| “Blanks” (e.g., for a plaintext fill in the blank activity) are represented as underscores, dashes, ellipses, etc. | Blanks are not read out by screen readers | The Blank Spaces Solution |
| Glossary terms in textbox headers | Very insufficient color contrast | Adjust the font color of glossary terms when they are in textbox headers |
Conclusion
These checks are preliminary and are meant to be supported by the subsequent accessibility evaluation. This process reduces the chance of accidental errors or overlooked issues (e.g., missed language tag, header cell, etc.). It is also helpful to have a list of remediation which needs to be done by the author (primarily in non-English language textbooks) as early on as possible (e.g., images, captions, transcripts of non-English text, videos with non-English text on screen). We do not check for contextual visuals, every instance of color contrast issues, reading order, screen reader compatibility, keyboard control, tabbing, assistive tech compatibility, semantic structures (other than lists), zooming, text size, or flashing visuals.
