Joomla module
Meet the Toolbar.
One round button. Eight ways to make your site easier to read.
A visitor taps the A+ button and picks what helps: a dyslexia-friendly font, more breathing room, stark contrast or a soft tint, a reading guide, a voice that reads aloud. Everything is their choice, remembered on their own device, and it works on the site you already have.
Try it right now: look to the top right corner of this page for the round A+ button. That's the real module, and every option works on this page.
Why it exists
Nobody reads the same way.
Some people want bigger gaps between lines. Some find a dyslexia-friendly typeface calmer. Some need black and yellow, others find that glaring and prefer a pale tint. A site can't guess, and a single "accessible" theme can't please everyone.
So the Toolbar hands the controls to the reader. It's a small panel with plain on/off buttons and real keyboard shortcuts. It sits quietly in a corner until someone wants it, and the choices stick from page to page.
What's in the box
Eight switches. No fuss.
Typeface
Dyslexia-friendly font
OpenDyslexic, bundled with the module. It only downloads when someone turns it on, and icon fonts are left alone.
Spacing
Room to breathe
More space between lines, letters and words, for dense text that needs loosening up.
Contrast
High contrast
Bold colors with bright links. Black, white and yellow by default; you choose all four colors.
Overlay
A softer tint
One warm background color for readers who find stark contrast harsh. You pick the color.
Color
Grayscale
Takes the color out of the whole page, for people who are sensitive to it or just want calm.
Focus
Reading guide
A band that follows the cursor or finger and dims the rest. Set its height in px, em, rem or vh.
Links
Underline links
Every link gets a visible underline, so nobody has to rely on color alone to spot one.
Voice
Read aloud
Click text, or select a passage, and the browser speaks it. Visitors set the speed and pick a voice.
Fits your layout
Put it where it makes sense.
Six corners
Floating in any corner or top and bottom center, with a different spot for phones.
Fixed or scrolling
Stays on screen as people scroll, or sits at its place on the page.
Inline
Skip the floating button and show the panel right in a module position.
Keyboard shortcuts
Ctrl+Alt plus a letter for every option. Switch them off in the module if they clash.
Straight talk
What it won't do.
Not a fix-all
It adds options, not accessibility
The Toolbar doesn't replace readable colors, image descriptions or a site that works by keyboard. It sits on top of that work.
Screen readers
Read aloud isn't one
If someone already uses a screen reader, they should leave Read aloud off. It also changes what a click does while it's on.
Pasted styling
Inline styles can win
Text pasted into an editor with its own inline style="" can ignore the font and spacing options. Browsers give that styling priority, and CSS can't override it cleanly.
For the technical crowd
Under the hood.
- Works with
- Joomla 4, 5 and 6. A Joomla 3 build is not offered.
- Dependencies
- None. No jQuery, no framework, no external requests.
- Weight
- About 5 KB of CSS and 8 KB of JavaScript, gzipped. The font files load only when someone turns the dyslexia font on.
- Privacy
- Choices live in the visitor's own browser (localStorage). No cookies, no accounts, no tracking, nothing sent anywhere.
- Settings
- Choose which of the eight options appear, panel heading, position, corner (and a separate phone corner), fixed or absolute, reading guide size, shortcuts on or off, and a link to your accessibility statement.
- Theming
- Contrast palette (four colors) and overlay color set in the module, written out as CSS custom properties.
- Icon fonts
- Font Awesome, Bootstrap Icons, Material, Ion, Glyphicons and Dashicons are skipped by the font switch, so icons don't turn into empty boxes.
- Licence
- GPL v2 or later. OpenDyslexic is bundled under the SIL Open Font License.
Ready to help readers?
It's free. Download it, or tell us what you'd like it to do.
Accessibility Toolbar
Changelog.
1.5.3
Stable · October 2026A keyboard-access fix. Running on Joomla 6 with the T4 template. Joomla 4 and 5 are supported too.
- Fix: the A+ button was the last thing a keyboard user could reach, after every link on the page. It now comes first.
- Skip to main content link, hidden until it gets focus, placed just ahead of the A+ button. If your template already has a skip link, it's left alone and A+ goes right after it. No main content area found, no link added.
- Add Skip to Main Content Link setting (default Yes) to turn the added link off.
- The version number used to refetch the stylesheet and script now matches the release, so browsers pick up the changes.
Earlier releases
1.5.2Docs
- The README now says plainly that Joomla 4, 5 and 6 are supported and that Joomla 3 is not, and has a new "Staying lightweight" section.
1.5.1Shortcuts switch
- Enable Keyboard Shortcuts setting in the module. When it's off, the shortcut hints disappear from the panel and no key listener is registered at all.
1.5.0Shortcuts and a reminder
- Keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+Alt plus a letter for every option, and Ctrl+Alt+A to open the panel. They're ignored while typing in a field, and each shortcut is shown beside its button.
- Read aloud reminder: while Read aloud is on, the A+ button turns red and pulses (the pulse is skipped with reduced motion), so nobody forgets that clicks now read text instead of following links.
1.4.1Icon-only controls
- Fix: Read aloud stayed silent on logo links and icon buttons that have no text. It now falls back to
aria-label,aria-labelledby, the image's alt text, thentitle.
1.4.0Underline, voices, statement link
- Underline links toggle, the eighth option.
- Accessibility statement link: an optional link at the bottom of the panel, with your own URL and label.
- Read aloud speed and voice: visitors choose from 0.75x to 2x and from the voices on their device.
- Read selection: highlight some text and Read aloud speaks just that.
1.3.0Read aloud
- Read aloud: click text and the browser speaks it, using the Web Speech API. No audio files and no external service.
1.2.1 – 1.2.2Icon fonts
- 1.2.1: the dyslexia font no longer touches Font Awesome icons, which used to turn into empty boxes.
- 1.2.2: the same protection for Bootstrap Icons, Material Icons and Symbols, Ion Icons, Glyphicons and Dashicons.
1.2.0Placement
- Six positions: bottom and top center join the four corners.
- Mobile Override: a different position below 768px.
- Positioning Style: fixed (stays on screen while scrolling) or absolute (scrolls away with the page).
1.1.2 – 1.1.5Admin documentation
- A Documentation tab in the module settings, covering how the override works, known limitations and a note on accessibility overlays.
- A plain-language admin guide added to the package, and several rounds of wording and formatting tidy-ups.
1.1.1Guide size, readable panel
- Reading guide band height is now a setting, in px, em, rem or vh. The default is three times taller than before (180px).
- Fix: High contrast and Reading overlay no longer recolor the toolbar itself, so active buttons stay readable.
1.1.0Three new options
- Reading overlay: one warm background tint, with the color set in the module. It switches off High contrast, and the reverse, since the two contradict each other.
- Grayscale: removes color from the whole page.
- Reading guide: a band that follows the pointer or finger and dims the rest.
1.0.2 – 1.0.7First release and install fixes
- 1.0.2: dyslexia-friendly font (OpenDyslexic bundled), increased spacing, high contrast with a four-color palette, and a floating A+ button.
- 1.0.3: the floating button now moves to the page body, so template wrappers can't pin or clip it.
- 1.0.4 – 1.0.5: stylesheet and script are attached with Joomla's classic document methods. Some templates, T4 among them, never output assets registered the newer way.
- 1.0.6: a tooltip on the A+ button and a clearer note that Position matters even for floating.
- 1.0.7: plain Yes/No radio buttons in the admin, replacing switchers that rendered invisibly.
