Projects

Open Source Matters is seeking a contractor to deliver Milestone 8a of Joomla's STF-funded accessibility programme, building automated end-to-end accessibility tests for the critical admin user journeys and integrating an accessibility CI gate into Joomla's GitHub Actions pipeline. This milestone ensures that every other milestone's work is protected from regression in future releases.

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.

Parallel to this milestone, we have published the RFP "Automated Accessibility Testing in CI, Tuning, Dashboard and Extension Guide" Applicants are welcome to submit a single proposal covering both milestones. This is encouraged, provided that the proposal clearly distinguishes the work packages, timelines, and deliverables for each milestone. All deliverables must be completed within the specified deadlines, regardless of whether the contractor is awarded one or both milestones.

This RFP covers Milestone 8a: Automated Accessibility Testing in CI, Core Tests and CI Gate.

This milestone ensures that every other milestone's work is protected from regression in future releases. By codifying the test protocols from Milestone 1a into automated CI checks, it turns accessibility from a per-milestone deliverable into a continuous quality property of the codebase, attributable to specific pull requests and fixable at the point a regression is introduced.

Milestone 8a depends directly on the test protocols and acceptance criteria established in Milestone 1a (including the agreed baseline) and on the critical admin user journeys identified there. It feeds into later milestones in the testing cluster.

Scope of Work

The contractor is required to deliver all three 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: Automated End-to-End Accessibility Tests for Critical User Journeys

Implement automated end-to-end accessibility tests with axe-core checks for all critical admin user journeys identified in Milestone 1a, at a minimum:

• Login
• Article create and edit
• Media management
• List views with filters
• Installer
• Updater

In addition, the automated tests must validate that Guided Tour steps do not reference or rely on inaccessible interactions, ensuring that onboarding flows remain operable with keyboard and assistive technologies as the UI evolves.

The tests must:

• Run reliably and repeatedly in CI
• Be aligned with the test protocols, AT/browser matrix, and acceptance criteria from Milestone 1a
• Be structured so that adding further journeys later (for example by the contractors of Milestones 8b and onward) does not require restructuring the existing test base

The proposal should be explicit about what tools and libraries will be used for automation, and about any areas where automation is not feasible due to technology limitations. For example, if a proposal does not include automating AT flows, it should list that as out of scope.

Deliverable 2: Accessibility CI Gate in Joomla's GitHub Actions Pipeline

Integrate an accessibility CI gate into Joomla's GitHub Actions pipeline. Pull requests that introduce new WCAG 2.2 A/AA violations beyond the agreed Milestone 1a baseline must fail the gate.

Failure output must be:

• Actionable, with error messages explaining what broke and how to fix it
• Specific enough to identify the failing journey, the failing rule, and (where possible) the failing element or selector
• Stable enough to avoid flakiness, with a documented policy for triaging intermittent failures

The gate must be configured against the agreed baseline from Milestone 1a, with a documented process for evolving that baseline as accessibility improves in later milestones.

Deliverable 3: Documentation and Milestone Report

Maintain the programme documentation framework and produce the milestone completion report in the format agreed at kick-off. The documentation must also include:

• A contributor-facing guide explaining the CI gate, how to interpret a failure, and how to update tests when behaviour intentionally changes
• A maintainer-facing guide explaining how to evolve the baseline as later milestones land

Contract Details

Milestone reference: Milestone 8a (Cluster H: Testing Infrastructure)

Contract type: Service agreement with OSM.

Dependency: Builds directly on the test protocols, acceptance criteria, and baseline from Milestone 1a, and on the critical admin user journeys identified there.

Duration: 2 months (1 November 2026 to 31 December 2026).

Delivery date: 31 December 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

• Building automated end-to-end accessibility tests, including with axe-core or comparable tooling
• Integrating accessibility checks into CI pipelines, including GitHub Actions
• Designing CI gates with actionable, stable failure output and documented baselining policies
• Practical knowledge of ATAG, WCAG 2.2 A and AA, sufficient to translate manual test protocols into automated checks without losing fidelity
• Joomla core development familiarity, sufficient to author end-to-end tests for the critical admin journeys listed above (login, article create/edit, media management, list views with filters, installer, updater)
• Working knowledge of Guided Tour or comparable onboarding systems and how to validate their accessibility
• Clear technical writing for both contributor-facing and maintainer-facing documentation

Skills the applicant should have

• Familiarity with Joomla's existing GitHub Actions setup and its conventions for tests and gates
• Understanding of the Milestone 1a test protocols and acceptance criteria (the contractor will be expected to read and apply them directly)

Skills that would be nice to have

• Prior experience hardening an open-source project's CI against flaky accessibility tests
• Familiarity with Atum and Cassiopeia, since the journeys traverse both

How to Apply

Proposals must include the following

• A brief description of your organisation or team and relevant CI and accessibility testing experience
• Examples of comparable CI-integrated accessibility test suites or gates, with links where possible
• At least one reference from a comparable project engagement
• Your proposed approach and methodology for the automated tests, the CI gate, and the baseline policy
• A clear description of how you will translate the Milestone 1a test protocols into automated checks, and how you will handle protocols that cannot be fully automated
• A clear description of how the test base will be structured to allow later contractors (Milestones 8b and onward) to extend coverage
• Identification of any potential schedule risks or bottlenecks, including any dependency on the timing of Milestone 1a
• A timeline showing how the two-month 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 community members.

Evaluation criteria are:

• Technical quality: depth and rigour of the proposed test and CI gate methodology
• Accessibility expertise: demonstrated ability to encode WCAG 2.2 A/AA checks into automated tests without losing fidelity
• CI discipline: a credible plan for actionable, stable gate output and for baseline evolution as the codebase improves
• Joomla fit: demonstrated ability to author end-to-end tests for the named admin journeys
• Timeline: a realistic plan for delivery within the two-month period
• 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 the agreement is signed and the Milestone 1a outputs are available.

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 [email protected] as email address.