Accessibility policy for the site of the Ministère de l’Immigration et des Communautés culturelles

Accessibility

Web accessibility standards are aimed at the construction of sites that allow individuals with a permanent or temporary disability to effectively see, understand, navigate and interact with the Web.

A disability could be:

• visual (blind, visually-impaired, colour-blind),
• motor (difficulty using a mouse or keyboard),
• auditory,
• cognitive or neurological (dyslexia or slow reader),
• speech related.

NOTE

The website of the Ministère de l’Immigration et des Communautés culturelles (MICC) currently contains certain accessibility obstacles that will progressively be corrected.

Some of the elements that do not meet Web accessibility standards and will be brought up to these standards include:

• the search engine,
• script elements,
• online products and services,
• PDF documents,
• certain elements of on-line forms,
• video vignettes
• certain colour contrasts.
  
  

All current and future content will progressively be made to conform to the new accessibility standards adopted by the Québec government, namely:

• Standard sur l'accessibilité d'un site Web (SGQRI 008-01) (PDF, 1.17 Mb) (accessibility standard for websites)
• Standard sur l'accessibilité d'un document téléchargeable (SGQRI 008-02) (PDF, 885 Kb) (accessibility standard for downloadable documents)
• Standard sur l’accessibilité du multimédia dans un site Web (SGQR1-008-03) (PDF, 1 Mb) (multimedia accessibility standard for websites)
  
  

In the meantime, users can find out about the practices and techniques employed by the MICC to make its site accessible by regularly consulting this page.

Note: The MICC cannot guarantee accessibility to content originating from third parties that are not subject to the Web accessibility standards adopted by Québec’s government for individuals living with a disability.

Verification of site compliance

Site compliance to government standards with respect to accessibility was verified with the following technical tools:

• Validators of W3C for HTML and CSS
• Firefox 3.6 and plug-ins:
• Firebug 1.9.1
• Firefox Accessibility Extension 1.5.7.1
• Web Developer toolbars 1.1.9
• Juicy Studio Accessibility Toolbar 1.7
• WCAG Contrast checker 1.1.02
• Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 with IETester and the Web Accessibility Toolbar 1.2 plugin
• Colour contrast analyzer 2.0

Iconography

The following icons are used on the site:

•  : printable version
•  : top of page

Additional information

Structure and presentation

• The page setup for the MICC’s site relies in large part on the use of external style sheets, allowing for a uniform presentation style for the entire site.
• The pages are structured using HTML logic.
• Simple language is used as much as possible.
• The content of each page is organized according to a hierarchical structure of titles and subtitles.

Images

• Many of the images offer alternative texts.

Redimensioning

• Page setup allows users to change the size of the characters using the integrated tool on each page or the navigator functions.

Navigation and links

• The site plan is accessible on each page.
• Navigation menus reflect the structure of the information.

Opening new windows

The hyperlinks of the MICC’s site are opened within the same window, except for hyperlinks to external sites and links to PDF documents. However, it is possible to use the context menu (right button on the mouse) to open a link in a new window.

Assistance to disabled individuals

Individuals who have difficulty navigating the site or filling out one of our online forms can contact us for assistance by email or by phone.

Contributing to improving the site

To contribute to improving the accessibility and user-friendliness of the site, please contact us by email or by phone if you would like to:

• report difficulties using the site,
• notify us of any problems,
• share your comments or recommendations.
  
  

All of your comments and suggestions will be carefully considered.