Site accessibility policy

The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.
Attributed to Tim Berners-Lee, co-inventor with Robert Cailliau of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium.

It is the duty of every Web site to serve all surfers, whether physically handicapped or able-bodied, whether they are making use of outdated or more recent equipment. In France, Article 47 of the Law 2005-102 of 11 February 2005, on promoting equal rights and opportunities, participation and citizenship for disabled persons, requires that all government-affiliated Web sites be accessible to all: “All online communications services of government agencies, regional municipalities and public institutions under their aegis must be accessible to disabled persons. The accessibility of online communications services pertains to the access to any kind of information in digital form regardless of how it is accessed, the content and the viewing mode. International guidelines for Web site accessibility must be applied by online communications services.”

For the development of its Web site, the CICRP has assumed this commitment and makes every effort through its accessibility policy to comply with the most exacting and recently introduced standards in this area.

Further work along these lines is planned for subsequent updates to the site.

Contents:

Compliance with standards
- Separation of style from structure
- Validation
Assistance with navigation and the viewing of content
Images
Printing
See also

Compliance with standards

So as to ensure that the content of the site remains accessible on any hardware, using any browser, or despite any specific handicaps of the user, each page is designed so as to separate its content from its presentation.

XHTML and the recommendations of the World Wide Web Consortium increasingly tie in with accessibility standards by attaching greater importance to this separation.

Separation of style from structure

The content of this site is written using strict XHTML 1.0 and the presentation is achieved through the use of style sheets (CSS2). This site uses neither Flash nor Javascript and does not require the downloading of any extension in order to view its content.

Content takes precedence over presentation and it remains legible even when using obsolete browsers without support for style sheets.

Validation

All of the pages of this site were validated using the tools provided by the World Wide Web Consortium.

The entire site has also been tested using the following browsers: Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6, Opera 9.22 as well as Safari on a Macintosh computer.

Accessibility has been tested using the automatic validators WebXAct (formerly known as Bobby), Wave 3.0, APINC, Ocawa and Cynthia. But as many issues cannot be verified using automatic tools, various points are repeatedly checked manually, resulting in regular updates that will allow us to continually improve the quality of the site.

Assistance with navigation and the viewing of content

Jump menu

A jump menu appears in the upper right corner of each page. Displayed as soon as the page begins loading, this menu allows the user to quickly access the page content, the main navigation menu and the search feature (see also assistance with searches).

Navigation menus and site map

The navigation menus provide access to the various pages of the site and reflect the site’s structure. The search tool and the abbreviated site map are always visible on every page and always in the same locations.

Similarly, users may always return to the home page, either by clicking a specific link in the vertical menu at the left side of each page or by clicking in the banner appearing on all pages immediately below the jump menu.

Tab order navigation

Users may also move from one link to the next on each page by successively pressing the tab key on their keyboards. After pressing the tab key, the active link may be opened by hitting the return key.

At present, we do not offer navigation by way of access keys.

For Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera: Ctrl key + mouse wheel
For Internet Explorer: View menu, then Text Size to choose the size desired
For Mozilla Firefox and Netscape: Ctrl key + the Plus (+) key to make text larger or the Minus (-) key to make text smaller.
For Opera: Press the + or - keys on the numerical keypad, or go to the View menu, then select Zoom to choose the desired option

Images

No content provided for informational purposes or navigation assistance is found uniquely within an image.

An alt attribute is associated with each image, which provides a brief description to be used by screen readers and also as a substitute for the image when graphic content is not displayed in a browser. Where this description is insufficient, a longdesc attribute is used to refer to a more detailed description.

Printing

A specific style sheet facilitates the printing of the pages of this site from within the various browsers on which it has been tested. Depending on the browser, the user may either select Print in the File menu, or right-click on the desired page.

The site also offers the possibility of downloading a number of documents (intervention requests, agreements and protocols, organisation chart, topical guides, research programme descriptions, etc.) in PDF format, with files in RTF format also provided for certain documents.