Our Work

Teacher and Youth Web Corner: Citizenship and Immigration

The Challenge:

Citizenship and Immigration Canada undertook the Teacher and Youth Web Corner to provide students with fun, interactive games on Canada, and to provide teachers with resources for use in the classroom. The goal was to offer teacher and students the information via a number of channels including the web, social media and mobile. CIC has committed to being 100% WCAG 2.0 compliant; therefore all of the channels had to be compliant.

The Solution:

The WebDrive team was brought on board specifically because of their experience and expertise in WCAG 2.0 standards. They developed the web site development strategy and then created the web site to be 100% WCAG 2.0 compliant. This involved ensuring that:

• All contextual images were properly "alt-tagged" and all decorative images were given null alt text
• Screen-magnifier tests concluded that text remained readable and functional
• Text was written in plain-language and complied with the chosen grade-8 reading-level standard
• The site was navigable by keyboard/tab functionality, and;
• That skip link navigation was enabled, among other key accessibility validation tasks.

The Result:

The CIC Teacher and Youth Web Corner project resulted in the first social media and mobile products that were WCAG compliant.

Discover Canada Mobile Application: Citizenship and Immigration Canada

The Challenge:

Canada has a proud tradition of welcoming immigrants and facilitating their citizenship. In this mobile-oriented world that we live in, this includes offering the official study guide for the citizenship test via mobile devices.

The Solution:

The WebDrive team developed of the mobile version of "Discover Canada" – Canada's official study guide for the immigration test. The challenge was that the Department undertook the mobile project before any Federal standards had been declared for mobile development. This created a unique opportunity the team, who took the lead by developing an interpretation of the WCAG 2.0 standards for mobile. The components included:

• Development of an accessibility-oriented interface (colours/layout/navigation)
• Accessibility approach to content (size and style of font, control of font views, etc.)
• Integration of XHTML and XML architecture that meets WCAG 2.0 standards for coding and execution.

The Result:

The mobile applications were developed quickly and to the top mobile programming standards (including WCAG standards).

RCMP Police Library

The Challenge:

The RCMP Police Library offers physical and electronic resources on modern policing methods to all members of the RCMP force. The library's efficiency and effectiveness depends, in part, on its ability to manage its collection. For this, it relies on a specialized 3rd party provider to manage and display collection information on the RCMP web site. However, following a Supreme Court ruling on web accessibility, the RCMP had to be sure that the web-based service offered by the 3rd party provider was WCAG 2.0 compliant.

The Solution:

The WebDrive team audited the 3rd party provider's web application and identified all areas of non-compliance. The team conducted both manual and automated reviews of the XHTML code, the colour contrast of the user-interface of the site, the order of navigational elements, the use of alternative text, validation of forms layouts and of the outputs of the application, and identified all areas of non-compliance in HTML/XHTML 1.0/CSS 1.0 code. The team then prepared and provided a detailed report of her findings.

The Result:

The result was a multi-page report that identified, by page, and by line-of-code, the areas of non-compliance. This format was chosen so that the 3rd party provider would be able to easily fix the pages and application-outputs identified.

Canadian Police College

The Challenge:

The Canadian Police College is Canada's leading police education facility. It is operated as a special operating agency under the RCMP and therefore is required to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling on the web accessibility of Federal Government websites. The CPC therefor decided to undertake a WCAG 2.0 and CLF 2.0 audit of the site to determine the kind of work and amount of work would be required to guarantee compliance.

The Solution:

The WebDrive team of designers with extensive experience in WCAG 2.0 and CLF 2.0 compliance undertook an audit of the site. The team reviewed the template of the CPC site to ensure it was CLF 2.0 compliant; conducted colour contrast tests of the site's design elements; reviewed the XHTML output of the site's Web Content Management System to validate the syntax and ensure the compliance of the code; they audited forms and web services applications offered through the site; they also validated the multimedia and social media components on the site against WCAG 2.0 standards.

The Result:

The result was a multi-page report that identified, by page, and by line-of-code, the areas of non-compliance. This format was used to correct any issues identified during the WCAG 2.0 and CLF 2.0 audit.

Canadian Single Securities Regulator: Finance Canada

The Challenge:

Finance Canada's former Minister, Jim Flaherty (2006 – 2011), undertook a study of the consolidation of Canada's Securities regulations. Instead of 13 provincially-driven securities regulations, which created unnecessary administrative burden on companies, Minister Flaherty advocated a Nationally defined and administered regulatory framework. In 2010, he established the Canadian Single Securities Regulator to educate and update the industry on the initiative. The new entity needed a CLF 2.0 and WCAG 2.0 compliant website.

The Solution:

The WebDrive team created the CSR web site to comply with both CLF 2.0 and WCAG 2.0 standards. The project began with the establishment of a comprehensive information architecture (IA) strategy, and the development of a CLF 2.0 design. The design was then validated for colour contrast and layout. The team then programmed the site into the Web Content Management framework using the Government's new HTML 5.0/CSS 3.0 based web template. The team then tested the output code of the site for WCAG 2.0 accessibility compliance and CLF 2.0 compliance (specifically multi-browser validations). Special attention was paid to the accessibility validation of video and social media components in the site.

The Result:

The new Canadian Single Securities Regulator site complies with all elements defined in CLF 2.0 and WCAG 2.0.

Task Force on Financial Literacy: Finance Canada

The Challenge:

Research has also shown that a strong national economy is built on the foundation of a financially literate population. Therefore, the Government of Canada decided to establish the Task Force of Financial Literacy. The mandate of the Task Force was to develop a national strategy to increase financial literacy among Canadians. The Task Force, and thus the website, was an initiative of Finance Canada and therefor had to be WCAG compliant.

The Solution:

The WebDrive team focused on ensuring accessibility compliance of the site. The work involved ensuring that:

• The design allowed the physically disabled to move easily through the site by ensuring that navigational elements were not too close together. Special attention was given to ensuring that navigation through the site did not require extensive dexterity. The site's information architecture was designed to ensure that written information was no more than three clicks away from the home page.
• The needs of the hearing-impaired were served by ensuring that audio and video coverage of the Task Force's work was also available in closed-captioned versions or through written transcripts.
• Visually disabled Canadian's were served by ensuring that the design of the site was well contrasted and that headings, navigation areas, charts and tables could easily been seen and interpreted. The programming elements of the site were done so that screen-readers could easily verbalize the information. This included ensuring the proper order of the code, tagging of images, conversions of PDF documents, tagging of PDF documents, proper use of hierarchies and appropriate coding for forms and form outputs.

Lastly, the team tested all of the social media elements that were deployed to ensure that they complied with WCAG standards.

The Result:

The result was an interesting, dynamic, content-rich site that complied with WCAG standards.

Canada Student Loans

The Challenge:

The Canada Student Loan Program exists to assist post-secondary students and their families with decisions pertaining to pursuing education after high school. There are many stages leading up to post-secondary including career exploration, financial preparedness, education planning and the management of loans and bursaries during and after one's studies. HRSDC wanted to develop five (5) videos that outlined, in simple terms, the components of each of these stages.

The Solution:

The WebDrive team and a team of Flash developers developed ten (10) Flash-based videos (five in English and five in French) that were WCAG 2.0 compliant. The WebDrive team worked on the accessibility component of the project. This involved producing the videos in several formats on WCAG 2.0-compliant HTML/XHTML 1.0/CSS 1.0 pages to enable the widest number of people and assistive technologies to view the videos (Flash, Windows Media, Quicktime, MPEG 4). It was imperative that different types of assistive technologies could be used to peruse the information in these educational videos, thus transcript versions of each video were developed and each video was offered with closed captioning (SMIL). Audio-only versions (MP3) were also provided so that people with visual disabilities could listen to the same information. The team also worked on developing XHTML pages that housed the transcript versions of the audio track of each video. This allows hearing impaired Canadians to have the same information as what is being said in the videos.

The Result:

The Canada Student Loans educational and promotional videos were produced in English and French, and offered in multiple formats on the CanLearn.ca web site in order to comply with WCAG standards on accessibility.

Canada Learning Bond

The Challenge:

The Canada Learning Bond (CLB) is a saving incentive from the Government of Canada to encourage low-income families start saving early for their children’s post-secondary education through Registered Education Savings Plans (RESPs). HRSDC decided that Canadians needed easy to understand content on the complicated program, and therefore decided to undertake the development of two (2) videos: one video on the Canada Education Savings plan and the other on the Canadian Learning Bond.

The Solution:

The WebDrive team were in charge of developing WCAG-compliant videos for HRSDC. The team led a team of Flash developers to produce the Flash-based videos in several formats on WCAG 2.0-compliant HTML/XHTML 1.0/CSS 1.0 pages to enable the widest number of people and assistive technologies to view the videos (Flash, WindowsMedia, QuickTime, MPEG4). The WebDrive team ensured that the different types of assistive technologies could be used to peruse the information in these educational videos. They ensured that transcript versions of each video were developed in HTML format and each video was offered with closed captioning (SMIL). They also integrated audio-only versions so that persons with visual disabilities could listen to the same information. Lastly, the team ensured that these multiple formats were offered in a visually appealing, easily accessible way while complying with both CLF 2.0 and WCAG standards.

The Result:

The CLB educational and promotional videos were produced and offered in multiple formats on the CLB web site in order to comply with WCAG standards on accessibility.