What is digital accessibility?

According to Tim Berners-Lee (Director of W3C and inventor of the World Wide Web), accessibility is:

Giving access to the web and its services to everyone regardless of their hardware or software, network infrastructure, mother tongue, culture, geographic location and physical or mental abilities.

An internet website is “accessible” when anyone can navigate easily by using a browser and/or a support tool.

Compliance with the Standards

The XHTML code is in compliance with Specification XHTML 1.0. It has been tested using the W3C HTML validator. If, in spite of our best efforts, you identify errors following validations, we would be thankful if you could point them out to us.

Structure and display

The use of style sheets separates the website display from its content. The use of CSS positioning properties totally separates display from content and allows all documents to retain a coherent aspect when outside CSS: title, content, menus…

Navigation tools

Links for quick access

Positioned at the top of the page, these links give direct access to the screen display that you have targeted (without having to scroll through unwanted information):

• link for direct access to page content
• link for direct access to sub-menu (if there is one)
• link to the page describing the accessibility policy (this page)
• link to the site map
• link to the "contact us" page

Tabbed browsing

Switching from one link to another is possible by using the Tab key (Press Tab and press again until you have selected the link that you want, then validate by pressing Enter)

Breadcrumb trail

The breadcrumb trail is a navigation aid to show you the path that you have followed to arrive at the page displayed on the screen and allow you to backtrack in the website tree structure.

Other

Simply clicking on the logo brings you back to the “home page”.

The “Top of page” link (located at the bottom of the page) stands for what it says and allows you to return to the top of the page.

Adjusting size of text and page

To allow users to modify the website display, and particularly to adjust font size on the displayed page, page lay-out is based on the use of relative units. It is therefore possible to increase the size of the text or of the page:

With most browsers: Ctrl + scroll wheel on mouse
or
Ctrl+ to increase font size and Ctrl- to decrease it.

In versions preceding Internet Explorer 7: in menu bar at top of browser, go to Display >Text Size and select the font size you want.

Printable version

When printing an Internet page, it will be rendered without the navigation indications;  those will be masked in order for you to print only the useful plain text: on all of browsers, find menu bar at top of browser, go to File>Print.

Reading PDF documents

Documents are available throughout our website and can be downloaded in PDF file format.

If you do not have "Acrobat Reader", it can be downloaded from the Adobe Website.

You can also convert PDF documents into HTML scripts by using the on-line Adobe conversion engine.

What you need to do is to copy the address of your PDF file and paste it in the required box (when using Mozilla Firefox right click on the file, then “Copy link address”; on Internet Explorer right click on the file , then “Copy link address”, and right click on the file then “Copy shortcut”).

Depending on how complex the PDF document is, its conversion may produce more or less satisfactory results.

Adding this website to your “Favourites”

In the menu bar at the top of your browser:

• When using Internet explorer: Favourites > Add to favourites
• When using Mozilla Firefox: Bookmarker > Bookmark this page
• When using Safari: Bookmark Tags > Add to tags
• When using Opera: Bookmark Tags > Tag to page

If you run into any difficulty when navigating through our Website, please be sure to inform us.