Accessibility Project

Open Source Matters is seeking a contractor to deliver Milestone 1b of Joomla's STF-funded accessibility programme, turning the Milestone 1a audit findings into a prioritised remediation backlog, merging quick-win fixes, and publishing the roadmap to the Joomla community. This milestone establishes the shared source of truth that every subsequent implementation milestone and all STF reporting will build on.

Introduction and Background

Open Source Matters, Inc. (OSM), the non-profit organisation supporting the Joomla project, is selected for funding from the Sovereign Tech Fund (STF) to deliver a structured, 20-month accessibility improvement programme across the Joomla CMS. The programme covers 19 independently contracted milestones, ranging from expert audits and remediation work to documentation, testing infrastructure, and community enablement.

This RFP covers Milestone 1b: Remediation Plan, Quick Wins and Community Publication.

The expert audit from Milestone 1a tells us what is broken. This milestone turns that knowledge into action. The prioritised remediation backlog gives every subsequent milestone a clear, agreed brief. The community publication is equally important, because it closes the loop with Joomla's global community of developers, agencies, and site owners, and builds confidence that the STF investment is being used transparently and systematically. Extension developers who learn about the upcoming design-system and component changes can begin planning their own accessibility improvements, multiplying the impact of the work across the roughly 4,800-extension ecosystem.

Milestone 1b depends directly on the outputs of Milestone 1a (the categorised audit findings, the baseline metrics, and the agreed test protocols and acceptance criteria). Work on this milestone begins once those outputs are available.

Scope of Work

The contractor is required to deliver all five deliverables described below. Scope and acceptance criteria are fixed. The budget is to be quoted as a fixed price, based on the applicant's approach and team composition.

Deliverable 1: Prioritised Remediation Plan

Produce a severity and effort-rated remediation plan, structured as a prioritised issues backlog in the Joomla GitHub tracker. Each audit finding from Milestone 1a must be:

Mapped to the milestone or milestones that will address it (MS2a through MS10)
Rated by severity (carried over from Milestone 1a) and by implementation effort
Tagged with the relevant WCAG 2.2 success criterion
Given acceptance criteria tied to the test protocols defined in Milestone 1a
This backlog is established as the shared source of truth for all subsequent milestones and for STF reporting.

Deliverable 2: Quick-Win Fixes Merged to Core

Fix and merge all audit issues that meet the quick-win threshold, defined as issues solvable in approximately one hour or less, with no architectural dependencies on later milestones. Typical candidates include missing aria-label attributes, missing or unusable text in HTML alt attributes on images, incorrect contrast values in CSS, incorrect ARIA role attributes, and missing <label> elements on simple form controls.

All quick-win fixes must be merged to the Joomla main branch, not only submitted as pull requests.

Deliverable 3: Re-Run of Baseline Metrics

Re-run the baseline metrics established in Milestone 1a after the quick-win fixes are merged, to capture the immediate improvement and to establish the true starting point for all deeper implementation milestones. The metrics must be produced using the same method documented in Milestone 1a, so that the results are directly comparable.

Deliverable 4: Community Publication of Findings and Roadmap

Publish a clear, accessible summary of the work results. The summary must be written for a general Joomla audience and not only for developers, in order to build awareness and to invite feedback from the extension ecosystem.

Deliverable 5: Documentation and Milestone Report

Maintain the programme documentation framework and produce the milestone completion report in the format agreed to at milestone kick-off with.

Contract Details

Milestone reference

Milestone 1b (Cluster A: Foundation)

Contract type

Service agreement with OSM. This is a separate contract from Milestone 1a.

Dependency

Begins after the deliverables of Milestone 1a are available.

Duration

2 months (1 September 2026 to 31 October 2026).

Delivery date

31 October 2026.

Payment terms

Full payment upon acceptance of all deliverables.

Budget

To be quoted by the applicant as a fixed price, based on the scope described.

Eligibility and Required Skills

Applicants must have experience in the following areas

• Expertise in WCAG 2.2 and ATAG 2.0, and in assistive-technology testing (NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver)
• Basic PHP coding skills and understanding of the github workflow (Pull Request, Review, Merge)
• Experience translating accessibility audit findings into prioritised, effort-estimated backlogs with clear acceptance criteria
• Proficiency with automated testing tools such as axe-core, to re-run the baseline metrics
• Clear, accessible writing for both a general community audience and technical and regulatory reporting

Skills the applicant should have

• Familiarity with the Atum admin template and the Cassiopeia frontend template
• Experience with ARIA authoring practices and complex UI patterns (modals, data tables, drag-and-drop)

Skills that would be nice to have

• An established track record of contributions to the Joomla project
• Proven Joomla core development experience, including the ability to produce, review, and merge pull requests to the Joomla CMS main branch
• Familiarity with Joomla's GitHub issue tracker and contribution workflow 

How to Apply

Proposals must include the following

• A brief description of your organisation or team and relevant remediation and Joomla development experience
• Examples of comparable accessibility remediation work, including links to merged contributions where possible
• At least one reference from a comparable contracted engagement
• Your proposed approach and methodology for producing the backlog, identifying and merging quick wins, and publishing to the community
• Identification of any potential schedule risks or bottlenecks, including any dependency on the timing of Milestone 1a
• A timeline showing how the delivery period will be structured
• Your fixed-price proposal for the full scope

Proposals should be submitted by email to the address published alongside this RFP. The submission deadline is two weeks from the date of publication.

Selection Process

Proposals will be reviewed by a small selection committee comprising OSM board members and/or the Project Manager(s) of the programme.

Evaluation criteria are:

• Technical quality: depth and rigour of the proposed remediation and quick-win methodology
• Combined expertise: demonstrated WCAG 2.2 and assistive-technology knowledge together with understanding of Joomla core development or similar projects.
• Timeline: a realistic plan for delivery within the agreed period
• Team: a realistic workload per team member, and the ability to cover time off
• Price: value for money within the fixed contract envelope

The selected team will be asked to sign a standard OSM service agreement. Work can begin once Milestone 1a outputs are available and the agreement is signed.

Community Support

Every milestone in this programme includes access to an experienced Joomla community maintainer if you need it. If you have questions about the codebase, about an accessibility standard as applied to Joomla's specific implementation, or about how something works within the Joomla ecosystem, you can ask. This support is funded through the project's Community Accessibility Reserve, a dedicated budget set aside to help contractors succeed. The maintainer's role is to guide and not to supervise. You are not on your own.

Questions

Questions about this RFP may be submitted by email to the address published alongside this RFP prior to the submission deadline. Answers to questions received will be shared publicly so that all applicants have equal access to information.

Submission Timeline

Terms

This RFP is published as part of the STF-funded Joomla Accessibility Programme. Submitting a proposal does not guarantee selection. OSM reserves the right to cancel or amend this RFP at any time.

• The RFP can be withdrawn at any point without reason.
• No compensation will be given to any entity submitting a proposal or working on a proposal.
• The vendor selected for this proposal will be solely at the discretion of Open Source Matters, Inc.
• Open Source Matters, Inc. reserves the right not to award any applicant if no proposal meets the expectations or requirements set by this RFP.

For all communication with OSM use This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. as email address.