Pressbooks Product Updates: March 2026

ByJenn Martin

Translation Updates: New Plugin

What’s happening? 

We migrated our product translation work to Crowdin, a more centralized platform for managing product translations.

What does this mean?

Components that were previously not open to translation (including the LTI and shared network plugins) can now be included in translation workflows.

Pressbooks is better set up to involve translators and scale language support (and will be rolling out French and Spanish translations for additional parts of the product).

We’ve recently completed other translation work including translating the Pressbooks Directory interface into French and Spanish, and begun work on translating our User Guide into French. Stay tuned for an expected release date.

Content Toolkit + Accessibility Updates

Authoring Tool Autofixes

Over the last few weeks we’ve added several autofixes to our Accessibility Authoring Tool, allowing authors to fix flagged issues directly from the visual editor tooltip.

screenshot of the Pressbooks accessibility authoring tool widget with new autofix functionality

These auto fixes include:

  • Remove empty headings or links
  • Stop links from opening in new tab/window
  • Apply correct markup for lists that aren’t correctly formatted
  • Help users apply correct heading levels
  • Quickly fix inadequate or missing alt text
  • Quickly fix inadequate link text

More Accessibility Updates

  • We’ve added missing aria labels to network catalog pages
  • We’ve fixed accessibility heading levels in the footnotes
  • We’ve added a visual and screen reader indication of when a link opens on a new page

Theme Change

What’s happening?

We have changed the name of our Andreessen theme to bell hooks (and have made the theme available to open source users as well!)

Why this is important

Our themes are named after people whose contributions we admire, and we want to ensure these choices reflect our values as an organization.

What this means for you

If you have a book using the Andreessen theme you do not need to take any action, just note that the name has changed

Custom Fonts

What’s happening?

Network Managers can now upload and use custom licensed fonts in their Pressbooks network. Fonts are stored in the network uploads folder and are available across all books and themes on the network.

How to use

  • Network Managers: Upload custom font files via the new admin page at Settings > Custom Fonts
  • Authors: Select desired Font Family via ‘Shapeshifter’ theme options or reference them by name in custom CSS. 

Note: custom font files are NOT copied when books are cloned to other networks

screenshot of the network settings to upload a custom font