CFIR · Accessibility
Accessibility.
This site is run by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and Research. We want everyone to be able to read it and use it, whatever you browse with.
What we are doing
We build this site to be read with the tools people actually use — keyboards, screen readers, magnifiers, phones held one-handed, browsers with the text turned up. As pages are built we check them the way testers do: with automated checks (the axe engine, the same one behind most accessibility tools) and by hand — reading each page with a keyboard and a screen reader, and at a narrow, zoomed-in width.
This is ongoing work, not a finished thing, and we keep at it. Some of what holds up is described below. We are still improving the readability of a few of the smaller, lighter labels in our page design. Where you find something we have missed, we would rather hear it than not.
Reading it with a keyboard
Everything you can press, you can reach with Tab, and where you are is shown as you go. A Skip to main content link is the first thing Tab finds on every page, so the navigation can be passed in one press.
The 3D room at research.ca/inside moves as you scroll, and Tab walks it forward one chapter at a time.
Motion
If your device is set to reduce motion, the site reads that setting and honours it: animation stops, and the 3D room shows its chapters as still pages rather than starting the scene.
That setting lives in your own system — Accessibility → Motion on iOS and macOS, Ease of Access → Display on Windows, Accessibility on Android — and every site you visit can read it.
Text, pictures and documents
Pictures that carry meaning are described in words. Pictures that are decoration are marked as decoration, so a screen reader passes over them rather than reading out a file name.
Reports and financial statements are published as PDFs.
If something is in your way
Tell us what happened and the address of the page: [email protected]. We reply within two working days.
If you would rather have something on this site in another form — a document read out, a page as plain text, a figure explained — ask, and we will send it.