Program

Government Package - The Next Level An accessible TYPO3 distribution not only for governmental institutions

In 2009 the Germany federal Office of Agriculture and Food offered to found the first release of the so called "Government Package", a site package for TYPO3 that served as a base for accessible websites especially for governmental institutions. it contained special features to fulfill the requirements of several German and European accessibility laws so that content created with it could be used for official websites of governmental institutions without taking the risk of being prosecuted.

The latest version of that package was available for TYPO3 version 4.7, which is now obsolete, since there several other releases of TYPO3 meanwhile. Current version 6.2 has a long term support, and so will the upcoming brand new TYPO3 7 LTS, so obviously it will be useful to pick up that package and bring it to the next level. 

Based on the work of a team around Oliver Hader at the University of Hof in Germany, there was another team at the TYPO3 User eXperience Week 2015 focusing on a new accessible distribution. The outcome of that week has then been taken to the TYPO3 Developer Days to form a team that can bring the concepts of the UX experts to life. Combined with the latest innovations of the TYPO3 world like THEMES and based on the well established and solid frontend framework of Bootstrap, there will be a modern, shiny and new version of this package finally cast into an official TYPO3 Accessibility Distribution.

This distribution will represent a proof of concept for other accessible distributions which will then be customized to serve as branch specific distributions for crafts, the medical, legal or pharma sector, just to name a few. The goal of these distributions is to make TYPO3 the CMS of choice for accessible sites not just in Germany or Europe but around the world.

We will show you the current state of the project, and since we will need quite some workforce to reach that goal and sponsoring is highly appreciated, there will be a roundup of several financing models as well.