Joomla 4 accessibility support: Tech for the humanity

Joomla 4 is the next most awaited revolution in the Joomla world. This flagship release will be supported for a longer period of time. That's the very reason Joomla 4 bears excellence in every aspect of the Joomla CMS. Joomla 4 is developed using all the latest technologies and usability in mind. Recently we have introduced you to the Joomla 4 admin UI design, released in its alpha version. As Joomla 4 is going to be the best Joomla version to date, the release team is continuously adding newer and newer stuff for its millions of user base. One of the best that Joomla 4 is going to have is the accessibility support.

What is accessibility support?

Accessibility support is one of the most important aspects of modern web design trends and technologies. Recently Microsoft Edge introduced 100% accessibility support with the software. Also, Apple introduced some adaptive technologies to give full accessibility support in their products. But for the first time in CMS, Joomla is introducing accessibility support with its next major release Joomla 4.

Accessibility support means the ability of the platform or software to give support on using assistive technologies like a speech recognition tool, screen magnifier, mouth stick, touchpad pen etc. Joomla 4 UI is designed following the WCAG 2.0 guideline. The color contrast used in the CMS is according to the instructions of WCAG 2.0. The UI structure is assembled in such a way that the element switching, finding menu items are easy and effortless. Also, they have introduced some other accessibility features. The brief discussion is below.

Joomla 4 accessibility support

To add accessibility features in Joomla 4, the Joomla team has changed many things. The most significant changes are seen in the color orientation and the menu workflow. Let's get down there for detailed information.

Color

The color of Joomla 4 admin dashboard is chosen considering the facts of accessibility support. The color is chosen according to the guidelines of WCAG 2.0 which requires the contrast of the UI to be higher than 4.5:1. The chosen color contrast of Joomla 4 admin UI is 4.8:1. Also, the interface is lightweight and follows a clean approach.

Admin UI

In Joomla 4 admin UI, the sidebar of the dashboard holds the important menu items like Components, Content, Media, Menus, Users etc. These crucial Joomla 4 dashboard sidebar items have sub items as well. Whenever you click on these items, the sidebar hides and submenu opens in that position. This ensures the user with accessibility tools getting everything easily without moving further.

Menu items

In Joomla 4 backend dashboard, all the menu items have their own submenus, including these come with a landing page. Now being accessibility friendly, in the new design whenever you hover over a menu item, the submenu items open up. You can access all of these items from there. So, this ensures less movement while using the Joomla 4 dashboard. This helps the user with accessibility issue easily get access to the menu items.

Configurable control panel

The whole control panel of Joomla 4 is configurable. So, for the sake of making the usability more easier, one can configure the control panel items availability and position. This will help the user with issues get their hands on everything quickly in the Joomla 4 admin dashboard.

All the information regarding Joomla 4 accessibility team and their purposes can be found here.

More details on this feature were discussed in Joomla World Conference 2017 with a nice presentation by Michael Babker.

Joomla 4 accessibility support is a great turn around for technology and humanity. With the promise of delivering technology to everyone, the initiative of introducing the accessibility support in Joomla 4 is worth praising.