Accessibility
Accessibility rules
The current version of the site tries to respect the accessibility rules of level 1, 2 and 3 as far as possible;
Gathered according to 7 themes (priority 2), the site pages are subdivided into items and accompanied with summaries when required (priority 3);
The site is regularly subjected to improvements. Nevertheless, if you meet any error, missing or difficulty in a page, please inform the web site author through the contact page.
Skip navigation links and keyboard shortcuts
The site does not use skip links and give the preference to the ARIA norm. This norm provides HTML attributes allowing to take into account the structure of a web page in a better way and to improve the interaction with the site through the keyboard.
However, the language version, the contact page, the site map and the RSS or atom feeds are directly accessible within every page:
- In Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers, use the Tab key;
- In Safari, open the menu View/Preferences/Advanced and click the button Press Tab to highlight each item in a webpage to activate the Tab key;
- In Opera, use the key combination Shift ↑, Shift →, Shift ↓ and Shift ←.
Note that navigating with the help of the keyboard only is far easier in Firefox or Internet Explorer than in Safari or Opera.
Languages
Texts exist in English and French; the eventual language changes within a text are signalled with the help of the attribute xml:lang;
The main language of every page is specified within the attributes xml:lang and lang (priority 3);
It is possible to reach the text in the other language within every page.
Structure and presentation
The distinction between presentation and content allows the preservation of the text coherence apart from style sheets: title, menus, items, content etc. (priority 1);
The site layout relies on external style sheets (priority 2);
The presentation of the site and themes remains coherent all over the site, subject to the choice of more appropriate colours for specific themes (nature). The same type of style sheet is applied throughout the site (priority 3);
Main information is placed in headings preceding the actual content. The site pages are structured with the help of h1, h2, h3, h4 and h5 elements used in the advisable order (priority 2);
The information in list form is presented with the help of ul, ol and dl elements (priority 2).
Navigation and links
The navigation reflects the information structure (priority 2); it is present on every page and allows to access the whole site at any moment (priority 3);
The adjacent links are separated by a printable character (-) in order to avoid their confusion in assistance technologies (priority 3). Nevertheless, it is not the case for links placed in a unordered list as the latter contains a natural break.
The site uses (click) drop down menus to facilitate the navigation with the help of the keyboard only and simplify the site access to mobile phones.
Images
All significant images are accompanied with a descriptive text through alt and title attributes when appropriate. The alt attribute of non significant pictures is empty (priority 1);
The images do nothing but illustrating the text as the bulk of information is given by the text itself (priority 2).
Videos
All YouTube and DailyMotion's videos presented on the site are accompanied with an alternative text (priority 1).
Colours
Information based on colours is equally accessible with the help of other distinctive features: border, underline, bold, font etc. (priority 1);
The contrast level of the background and foreground colours can be perceived by persons suffering from a colour perception deficiency or on a black and white screen (priority 2).
Tables
The few tables in the site are used to structure data and not only to present them (priority 1);
Row and column headings are identified by the th element (priority 1);
All tables are accompanied with a caption element and attributes scope or headers (priority 1).
Scripts
The few scripts used within the site are not at all influencing the navigation or consultation of pages. Pages remain accessible without any javascript support (priority 1).
Forms
Any apparent form element is associated with a label element (priority 2);
To avoid an incorrect treatment of empty boxes, default values are included in text zones (priority 3).
Abbreviations
The acronyms are brought to the fore with the help of the abbr element (the acronym element is no more used). The title attribute specifies their meaning when they appear in the page (priority 3).
Site scale
The site scale fits a variety of screen sizes and resolutions. In order to allow users to modify this scale, especially the character size, the layout relies on the use of relative units: em and percentages (priority 2). The same occurs with the printing version of the text of any page.
To modify the text size:
- In Firefox and Internet Explorer, open the menu View/Text Size;
- In Safari, open the menu View/Make Text Bigger;
- In Opera, press keys + or - (shift+ or shift-) to increase or diminish the text size.
To modify the page size, use the zoom:
- In Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer, press keys Ctrl+ or Ctrl-;
- In Safari, no keyboard equivalent except in the Mac version.
W3C recommendations
The XHTML code is in accordance with the XHTML 1.0 Strict specification and tested with the help of the W3C HTML validator;
The CSS code is in accordance with the CSS2 specification and tested with the help of the W3C CSS validator;
The site pages apply the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 and are tested with the help of Wave and FAE validators.
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