La Financière agricole du Québec

To obtain further information on the subject, please consult the following topics:

Web accessibility is aimed at the construction of sites that allow individuals having 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 the mouse or keyboard)
• Auditive
• Cognitive or neurological (dyslexia or slow reader)
• Speech related

New government rules apply

In recent years, legislation and governments have increasingly required producers and editors of Web content to meet standards for Web accessibility.

In this context, the FADQ website meets XHTML and CSS standards recommended by W3C. This development regulation makes screen readers and Braille ranges used by disabled people accessible from vocal browsers.

La Financière agricole du Québec is constantly improving and maintaining des accessibility standards for its website in compliance with the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

For further information on this topic, please consult the following:

• Improving access to our website
  • Structure and layout
  • Keyboard shortcuts
  • Adjusting text size
  • Scripts
  • Opening new windows
  • What do the icons mean?
  • Technical assessment of the website
• 2010-2011 Action Plan adopted by La Financière agricole
• Request to obtain an adapted document from La Financière agricole

Improving access to our website

To improve access to our website, we have applied certain recognized accessibility standards.

Structure and layout

• Use style sheets to control content and layout. This makes it possible to keep the order coherent (title, content, menus).
• Organize the content of each page using a hierarchical structure for titles and sub-titles.
• Use clear and simple language.
• Allow users to change text size.
• Provide a text equivalent for images.
• Configure useful keyboard shortcuts.
• Make the site map accessible on each page.

Please note that...

The following sections do not yet meet current guidelines:

• Search
• On-line products and services
• Notaries
• PFD documents

Keyboard shortcuts

Not all Internet users have the opportunity to browse with a mouse. This is why the FADQ website was designed to allow browsing using keyboard shortcuts. This feature is supported by most browsers.

If you are not familiar with keyboard shortcuts, the following will show you how:

• Users of Internet Explorer for Windows: hold the ALT key and shortcut key down at the same time and then press Enter.
• Users of Firefox for Windows: hold the Caps+ALT key and shortcut key down at the same time.
• Users of Mozilla for Windows: hold the ALT key and shortcut key down at the same time.
• Users of Firefox and Safari for Macintosh: hold the Ctrl key and shortcut key down at the same time.

List of keyboard shortcuts

• ALT + 0 = Use of accessibility guidelines
• ALT + 1 = Return to Home
• ALT + 3 = Access to Site Map
• ALT + 4 = Access to Search
• ALT + 9 = Access to Contact Us
• ALT + S = Access to contents of active page

Adjusting text size

To enable Internet users to adjust the size of the text, fonts were defined with a relative size. You can therefore increase or decrease the text size of a website. To do so, use either of the following methods:

Using your browser's menu

• Simply go to the “Display” menu and choose the option “Text Size” and select desired size.

Using keyboard shortcuts

• Users of Internet Explorer (IE) or Firefox: simply hold the Ctrl key down and, if your mouse has a wheel, turn it.
• Users of Firefox or browsers other than IE: simply hold the Ctrl key down and then press “+” or “-” keys to increase or decrease text size. Hold both Ctrl key + 0 key down to return to the browser's default text size.

Remember! These adjustments affect the browser and not the website. As a result, if you subsequently browse another site, use the same combination of keys to display a text size that is appropriate for you.

Scripts

Many of the scripts used on the site are not indispensable for browsing (e.g. pull-down menus) or consulting information (e.g. PDF documents). Pages with scripts are accessible nevertheless and without javascript support by the site map.

Opening new windows

Links associated with documents (PDF, DOC, XLS, etc...) will open in a new window and the caption will read: Link will open in a new window.

If you deactivate the scripts, the documents will open in the active window. If you want to open them in a new window, simply use the pop-up menu (right button on mouse).

What do the icons mean?

• : Top of page
• : Excel document
• : Word document
• : PDF document readable with Acrobat Reader
• : Document in HTML format
• : Audio and video document readable with Quick Time
  : Video document readable with Flash
• : Compressed document in ZIP format for download

Technical assessment of the website

A technical evaluation of the La Financière agricole website was conducted in March 2008 by AccessibilitéWeb, an expert firm in this field. It was rated 8.86 out of 10.

La Financière agricole is among the first Québec government agencies to set up an “accessible” website. Since its launch, we have constantly worked to develop, maintain and improve our accessibility standards.

To contact us

Direction des ressources humaines
La Financière agricole du Québec
1400, boulevard de la Rive-Sud
Saint-Romuald (Québec) G6W 8K7
Phone: 418 834-6867
Fax: 418 834-3955
drh@fadq.qc.ca