Chapter 5. Creating Accessible Templates

If you're not familiar with creating Joomla! templates, you can read Packt Publishing's Joomla! Template Design, by Tessa Blakely Silver. This chapter assumes that you already know the basics of Joomla! templates, and will focus on ensuring that your templates designs are accessible, and outline what to look out for when you design templates to ensure that they look smart and can be used by everyone.

Understanding How Joomla! Templates Work

Designing Joomla! templates certainly requires a different approach to the usual web standards-based site design. It needs a little bit of lateral thinking and good planning to get it right from the very beginning. The more time and effort you put into thinking about your design needs, the modules that you need to use, the better it pays off in the end. So getting it right with Joomla! really does mean, good planning.

Earlier versions of Joomla! (<1.5) also used tables for layout. This goes against the grain of...