A well-intentioned hack to Joomla's core files that stripped out table-based layouts, popups, and inaccessible JavaScript to make sites conform to W3C accessibility guidelines. More of a patch set than a true fork, but it scratched a real itch in the mid-2000s when web accessibility was an afterthought.
A well-intentioned hack to Joomla's core files that stripped out table-based layouts, popups, and inaccessible JavaScript to make sites conform to W3C accessibility guidelines. More of a patch set than a true fork, but it scratched a real itch in the mid-2000s when web accessibility was an afterthought.
In the mid-2000s, web accessibility was a growing concern but most CMS platforms, including Joomla, still shipped with table-based layouts, popup windows, and JavaScript that was hostile to screen readers. The Accessible Joomla project (a8e.org, where "a8e" is a numeronym for "accessible") set out to fix this by modifying Joomla's core files to automatically convert sites to be W3C-compliant.
The modifications included replacing HTML table layouts with CSS-based layouts, converting popup windows and JavaScript to accessible alternatives, and generally ensuring that Joomla-powered sites could meet accessibility standards without requiring webmasters to manually rework their templates. It was a pragmatic solution to a real problem.
However, maintaining a patch set against a moving target like Joomla's core was unsustainable. As Joomla itself gradually improved its accessibility support in later versions, the need for a separate fork diminished. The project faded into obscurity, though its advocacy for web accessibility in the CMS space was ahead of its time.
Accessible Joomla (a8e) project launched
Project activity declines as Joomla improves accessibility
Small but principled. It highlighted accessibility gaps in Joomla at a time when few people were paying attention, likely influencing Joomla's own accessibility improvements.