Evaluation and analysis team

Christophe Bélanger has a degree in Business Administration with a concentration in ICT and Marketing from HEC Montréal and has completed several specialized courses on new Web realities (standardization, usability, search engine optimization, and accessibility). Christophe has been working with SMEs and virtual communities since 1998. He is a founding member of AccessibilitéWeb and vice-president of business development at WebConforme. Christophe collaborates with organizations that favour e-accessibility, such as Communautique, Réseau Maillons, UQBM et W3Québec.

Denis Boudreau has been heading up the Coopérative AccessibilitéWeb since its inception. In addition to being general manager and a qualified expert, Denis is the chief co-writer of SGQRI-008, a Web site accessibility standard for persons with disabilities developed by and for the Quebec public administration. He plays an active role in the international community, where he is a member and an invited expert of the HTML Working Group du W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) He is also involved in several ISO (International Standards Organization) working groups that touch on the accessibility of human-machine interfaces.

Vincent François is vice-president of AccessibilitéWeb. He holds an Engineering degree from École Supérieure d'Informatique Électronique Automatique in Paris. François possesses over twenty years of experience in the definition and development of evaluation and certification tools. He has been working in the field of Web technologies for the past twelve years and became a specialist in e-accessibility in 2004. His role during the triennial evaluation was to train evaluators and produce numerical reports.

Jean-Marie D’Amour has dedicated twenty years to education and the rehabilitation of persons with visual disabilities. In 1996, he discovered the potential of the Web for people who are blind. Three years later, he familiarized himself with the Web Content Accesibility Guidelines 1.0 and participated in one of the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) work groups. Jean-Marie is the author of a user manual for computing with JAWS, a Braille and speech synthesis screen reader. He is also the creator of an online training program on Web accessibility, originally developed for CAMO for persons with disabilities and now updated on the AccessibilitéWeb site.

Rocio Alvarado is a student in Digital Art and Computer Science at Concordia University. She has also completed studies in Architectural Techniques. Since May 2007, Rocio has been working for Communautique where she is responsible for the Internet access centre and enjoys sharing her knowledge with others. She strongly believes that access to information is a right—not a privilege. Rocio is also a proponent of free software.

Chloé Brochard has been studying a combination of linguistics and French Sign Language (FSL) and is now pursuing her Master’s degree in the subject. In gaining awareness of the issues surrounding sensory disabilities, such as deafness, she was driven to broaden her knowledge of how persons compensate for their disability. As part of her Master’s, Chloé completed an internship of five months at the Institut Nazareth et Louis-Braille and collaborated with AccessibilitéWeb on the accessibility evaluation project of 200 Quebec Web sites.

In 2003, Mélissa Doyon obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminology from the Université de Montréal. Two years later, she decided to reorient her career and, in May 2008, will be completing a college diploma (DEC) in multimedia integration. She began learning about Web standards and accessibility during her studies, but her interest in the subject heightened during the AccessibilitéWeb site evaluation project. Participating in this project was a very meaningful experience for her. It now permits her to incorporate accessibility guidelines into her work on a daily basis and generate awareness among coworkers about good accessibility practices, which are still poorly understood and applied.

In addition to promoting high quality code and good practices, Normand Lamoureux is devoted to increasing awareness of the spirit of the Web and of open formats. Normand took accessibility into account when developing his very first Web site. He then took his commitment one step further by becoming a founding member of W3Québec, where he contributed team spirit, teaching skills, and analytical skills to various projects. Normand was one of the first certified accessibility specialists in the province of Québec and is the author of Sept pas vers l'accessibilité. He works as a rehabilitation officer in adaptive technology with persons who are blind at the Institut Nazareth et Louis-Braille.

Philippe Degré-Lapalme is studying communications at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) and has a background in multimedia integration. Philippe developed his knowledge of Web site development and analysis at school and work. Following an internship with BBDO Montréal, he participated in AccessibilitéWeb’s triennial evaluation and obtained a job as developer at WebConforme. Having been inspired by the project, Philippe strives to develop his Web sites in accordance with accessibility guidelines. His aspiration is to improve the quality of the Web by continually increasing his own standards of quality.