City of Mississauga Homepage

Making the City’s new website accessible

The redesigned Mississauga.ca must work well for people of all abilities.

This means ensuring that people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive difficulties can understand and effectively use our content and services through assistive technology, such as screen readers, screen magnification software and navigation assistance.

Our goal is to be fully compliant with the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.0 level AA.

To do this, we’re using the POUR model:

Making the website easy to perceive:

  • Providing text alternatives for non-text content like images for people with visual impairments
  • Organizing content so that it will make sense if it’s presented in different ways, like viewing it on a computer versus viewing it on a mobile device
  • Making content easy for people to see and hear through larger, clearer text and making sure there is enough colour contrast

Making the website easy to use:

  • All functions and actions should be completed using just a keyboard, for people who have difficulty with motor function
  • Give people enough time to read and use your site by not including fast moving content like carousels, banners and videos
  • Don’t create content that can cause seizures, for instance flashing images, videos or GIFs
  • Help people find information easily, by making navigation, page titles and search terms plain language and simple to find

Making the website easy to understand:

  • Use plain language and make content simple and understandable. Break content down using bullets and lists, giving enough white space around text.
  • Content should appear and operate in predictable ways. If you click on a button that says ‘login’, it should take you to a login screen.
  • Help people avoid and correct mistakes. For instance when using online forms, clearly show what fields are mandatory.

Making the website adaptable:

  • All website code must be free of errors
  • Use a combination of automated and manual testing to ensure the site is as compatible as possible with different devices, browsers, and assistive technologies
  • Content is compatible with current and future user tools
  • Make non-standard components like buttons recognizable by assistive technologies

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