This statement addresses three main areas of accessibility for Joomla! International Edition: Sites produced using Joomla! International Edition(front end and back end), and the Joomla-International.org site.

Sites produced using Joomla! International Edition

Front end (website)

We hope to provide a solution capable of delivering accessible websites that comply with WCAG 1.0 Priority 2 and Section 508 requirements by release 1 .0 release of Joomla! Internatioanl Edition (JIE).

The JIE Development Team focuses on front-end accessibility for the 1.x series of releases of Joomla! International Edition
Please note that while we hope that JIE will provide the ability to deliver WCAG compliant sites, many requirements depend on the template designers or content managers.  As such, JIE sites may well not comply with WCAG, for reasons out of the control of the JIE Development Team.  In other words: “We’ll give you the tools to comply, the rest is up to you!”.

Back end (admin)

The back-end or administration area of a Joomla! driven site is not a public area.  Unless your administrators have accessibility requirements themselves, the reduced compliance on the back-end will not impact your organisation/site accessibility levels.

Joomla-International.org website

Current situation

While we are committed to accessibility, we are aware, and regret, that our website does not comply with many WCAG/508 requirements, nor does it currently validate with XHTML 1.0 Transitional.  The site is JIE based, and as such, will be compliant when Joomla! meets requirements.

Future plans

We are dedicated to complying with current web standards (XHTML, CSS, WCAG/508) and best practices.  This will become possible as the Joomla! engine addresses known issues.

New content will be properly marked up.

Third party applications

In some situations, Joomla! will require the use of 3 rd party applications to assist with the functions of the website. Features such as the Forum, or the Forge were not programmed by the Joomla! development team. While we will aim to improve accessibility to those parts of our website, compliance remains outside of our control.

Concerns or Suggestions?

If you have concerns, issues or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to share them on the JIE Forum