Accessibility

The definition adopted by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is: “Making the Web and its services available to all individuals, regardless of hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental disabilities.”

Accessibility enables universal access to online content and services without any discrimination of users (including disabled), regardless of the technologies used to access information personal computer, tablets, mobile phone and other). Web accessibility therefore meets the needs of more types of user profiles that people recognized officially.

Thus, the elderly (age-related limitations), people wearing glasses or contact lenses (which are not always adjusted to the sight, for different reasons), people with visual limitations to distinguish color, illiterate, recent immigrants who speak little French, those unable to use the keyboard or mouse and others can access the content of the website content.

It is essential that blind people can browse a website with the use of assistive technology (Braille) and specialized software (speech software to interpret the content of Web pages).

Compliance with accessibility standards of the Government of Quebec

The Palais des congrès’ website follows the recommendations level AA from the Specification of standards on web accessibility (SGQRI 008-01) in order to comply with the accessibility requirements of the Government of Quebec.

To comply, the Palais des congrès meets the W3C standards through a consistent HTML structure.
Among the main rules, we can note the following:

• Compliance with HTML5 for the structure and content,
• Compliance with CSS for presentation of information,
• Use HTML tags in their original meaning,
• Separation of content and presentation through the use of style sheets,
• Prioritisation of information through title tags,
• Use ALT attributes to describe the content contextual images,
• Declaration of the language for screen readers,
• Identify specific visual links to internal and external,
• Contextualisation of links to aid comprehension,
• Possibility of changing the size of the text.

Web site accessibility is nowadays a major challenge. Compliance with these standards allows the Palais des congrès’ website to offer content accessible to the greatest number of people.