Lafarge, the 1st CAC 40 company to receive French and European accessibility lables for its website

• 
• 23rd August 2008
• Materials Handling
 

 

The Lafarge website, www.lafarge.com, has been recognized for its accessibility, earning it a "Silver" rating under the French Accessiweb label and an A grade from the European label, Euracert. The Lafarge website is the first CAC 40 company website to receive these labels.

The desire to achieve such a high level of accessibility illustrates Lafarge's commitment to excellence in social responsibility. Accessibility means the possibility for everyone, wherever they are, to browse the website:

- all Internet users alike, including people with disabilities, elderly people or those with little knowledge of the web

- irrespective of their equipment, including mobile phones, PDAs, technical aids or special equipment used by disabled people (e.g. Braille keyboards, text-to-voice, etc.)

- irrespective of the connection speed (narrowband or broadband).

To provide such accessibility the www.lafarge.com site provides numerous functions and aids to make browsing the site simpler for users. These include:

- high color contrast and the possibility of personalizing the display using a larger character font

- the possibility of screenless or mouseless navigation, and compatibility with special equipment used by disabled web users

- the possibility of listening to the website content via a text-to-voice function

- transcripts available for downloading, as an alternative to the flash animations and videos

- provision of subtitles and audio descriptions in videos, for people suffering from a hearing or visual impairment.

The Accessiweb and Euracert labels certify website accessibility. They are awarded by the BrailleNet association in line with international recommendations drawn up by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), a program launched by the World Wide Web Consortium. Lafarge was assisted on this project by Atalan, a company specializing in website accessibility.

These enhancements in terms of accessibility were carried out as part of the development of the new Lafarge website, launched at the beginning of 2008, following a complete editorial and technical revamp. The aim was to provide web users with an attractive, highly efficient site, with redesigned ergonomics making for simpler navigation throughout the site.

Accordingly, the new www.lafarge.com provides its 130,000 monthly visitors with:

- the Group's most recent job offers

- a wealth of content, with more than 200 pages highlighting the Group's businesses, its strategy and its commitment to sustainable development

- an educational presentation of the challenges facing the Group, via more than 160 case studies, theme-based search engines and glossaries of technical terms

- flash animations and videos to highlight the Group's partnership with architects, the science at the heart of building materials and the quality of Lafarge's R&D

- innovative functions such as RSS and podcasts

- services for web users and shareholders, with the possibility of signing up for SMS and email alerts, publication orders or subscriptions, and the possibility of corresponding with various players within the Group.

http://www.lafarge.com/