I am recreating a website for a Town Council in order to conform to government requirements for accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA).
The current website which I created a couple of years ago is using jDownloads for downloads of various pdf documents including Agendas and Minutes.
I've used Accessibility Testing Software on the jDownloads pages and a large number of Errors and Alerts have been reported. I will now need to decide on the best way forward.
a) Stay with jDownloads putting an exception clause in our Accessibility Statement saying that we are working with yourselves as developer to resolve these issues but I do need to resolve the issues within a few months.
b) Replace jDownloads with core Joomla facilities or another 3rd Party download extension
I would prefer to stay with jDownloads so I would like to know whether you have any plans to improve accessibility aspects of your extension.
Please find below some of the issues I found
Errors
3 X Linked image missing alternative text
<img src="https://<root>/components/com_jdownloads/assets/lightbox/loading.gif" id="loadingImage" style="position: absolute; z-index: 150;">
<img id="lightboxImage">
<img src="https://<root>/components/com_jdownloads/assets/lightbox/close.gif" id="closeButton" style="position: absolute; z-index: 200;">
1 X Missing form label (This is from the drowpdown cat list in header)
Alerts
4 X Redundant alternative text
This is in the icons such as Overview, Search etc
7 X Suspicious alternative text
These are the category icons (folder.png). Alt text is folder.png
11 X Redundant link
i.e. Identical Link on both image and text. This occurs both in header icons (Overview etc) and Category and File icons)
1 X JavaScript jump menu (This is from the drowpdown cat list in header)
1 X Layout table
i.e. table with no <th> elements in files layout
I could remove the cat list in header. Do you have any other suggestions to eliminate the issues above.
Manual checking may reveal other issues.