The City of Greater Sudbury has always been committed to providing web sites that are accessible and usable by all citizens.  We strive to meets or exceed accessibility standards industry best practices.

The city's website has been designed to be WCAG 2.0 level A compliant and meets the Province of Ontario's Accessible Information and Communications Standard (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005). Efforts are currently underway to be WCAG 2.0 level AA compliant within the timelines provided by the same Act.

Web Content Standards for Accessibility

In alignment with the WCAG 2.0 Guidelines, the City's Web Content Standards for Accessibility aims to ensure our websites are:

• Perceivable
  • Ability to provide text alternatives for any non-text content.
  • Site designed using CSS allowing for content to be compatible with screen readers
  • Use of ALT tags and title tags
  • Text size - increase and decrease
     
• Operable
  • Supports users who navigate via keyboard – IE using the Tab key instead of mouse
  • Proper use of colour which takes into account colour blindness
  • Multiple ways to navigate and find content – Search, Quick Links & Navigation
     
• Understandable
  • CMS provides ability to manage content in a way which is readable and understandable.
  • Ability to set site structure via heading tags (H1, H2 … H6)
  • Supports use of Abbreviation and Acronym tags to provide definitions
     
• Robust
  • Compatible with screen readers and cross browser compatible
  • Scalable for future standards
  • Compliant with W3C guidelines

Further, as Sudbury is a bilingual city, the French language policy extends this Web Content Standards for Accessibility.

Exceptions

The city recognizes situations where it is not practicable to present content in an accessible format. In these cases, best efforts are used to provide citizens an accessible alternative or assistance in acquiring the information they need.

Examples of such exceptions include:

• Mapping or GIS data
• Engineering drawings or complex technical data
• Legacy applications or data that cannot be updated or cannot be updated with reasonable effort/expenses.
• Vendor web applications where the City was unable to negotiate contractual obligation to maintain accessibility.
• Presentation content where rendering accessible would hinder the ability to achieve its intended purpose.
• Content that cannot be rendered accessible without significant impact.

Standards for External Contributors

In order to maintain its accessibility standards, the City expects all content provided by external contributors to be delivered in compliancy of the WCAG 2.0 and the Province of Ontario's Accessible Information and Communications Standard.

The City will accept no responsibility to convert non accessible content provided by external contributors, train external contributors on accessibility or infer costs related to acquiring tools required to meet the requirement.

Non compliance may result in refusal of content, breach of contracts and nonpayment.

Example of external contributions

• Content to be posted on a city departmental web page.
• Content to be posted on any city affiliated websites (ex: flysudbury.ca, sudburybeststart.ca, sudburymuseums.ca)
• Agendas and minutes from outside boards reporting to City Council or other city committees whose agendas are posted online.
• Reports or supporting material being presented to City Council or other city committees.
• Promotional, marketing or informational content to be posted on the city website or any third party sites in order to promote city services.
• All other types of content posted on the city website, City affiliated sites or content posted on third party sites in order to promote city services.

Guidelines for providing PDF and other documents

Links and resources:

• Adobe guide for accessible PDF using Acrobat Pro
• Adobe guide for accessible PDF using InDesign (overview)
• Adobe guide for accessible PDF using InDesign (detailed manual)
• eSolutions Writing for the web
• Color contrast checker 1
• Color contrast checker 2
• WCAG 2.0
• AODA

Guidelines for developing websites, web pages or web content

All website, web pages or web applications with public facing interfaces developed for the City are to be designed for compliancy with WCAG 2.0 Level AA and to meet the Province of Ontario's Accessible Information and Communications Standard (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005).

Websites must comply with these guidelines if they are developed:

• by a City of Greater Sudbury department,
• in partnership with the City of Greater Sudbury,
• funded fully or partially by the City of Greater Sudbury or;
• to provide service to citizens on behalf of City of Greater Sudbury.

Exceptions

External contributions may provide content which does not comply with City web accessibility standards should it be deemed non practicable to do so.

See the exceptions section under the Web Content Standards for Accessibility in this document.

Web Accessibility Plan

The following table was last updated December 12, 2011 and itemized the steps both planned and completed to meet and exceed accessibility compliance.

This table itemized only high level tasks. Other items may have been implemented and not figure here.