Accessibility

Canada Life aims to meet the standards of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 and our website accessibility also meets our obligations under the Equality Act.

For example, that means you should be able to:

  • Change colours, contrast levels, and fonts
  • Zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
  • Navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
  • Navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
  • Listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the recent version of NVDA)

Our approach to accessibility 

The Canada Life website includes accessibility features for users who access the site with screen readers, keyboard-only interactions, and other assistive technologies.

Search

The header of our site features a permanently accessible search field that can be used to find any indexed content on our site. 

Sitemap

We provide a complete sitemap of all our publicly available pages. This is keyboard navigable using the Tab key.

Tab-accessible main navigation

Users who prefer to use the keyboard can use the Tab and Enter keys to move through our primary navigation and mega-menu. 

Clear headings for mobile users

Our site has been tested with standard mobile device screen reading software and our content is structured using Heading 1 to Heading 6. You can use the 'Rotor' setting in Voiceover on iOS to move between headings. The Talkback screen reader app on Android can also move between headings using the 'Right then down' gesture or 'Left then up' gesture.

Imagery

Any imagery that includes descriptive content should have an alt tag. 

We also ensure that new content is clearly presented and written in plain English that is easy to understand and follow. We aim to look for new devices, technologies, or user behaviour that would change the accessibility requirements of the website. 

Non-accessible content 

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content).

Navigation and accessing information

There’s no way to skip the repeated content in the page header (for example, a ‘skip to main content’ option).

It’s not always possible to change the device orientation from horizontal to vertical without making it more challenging to view the content.

It’s not possible for users to change text size without some of the content overlapping.

Interactive tools and transactions

Some of our interactive forms are difficult to navigate using a keyboard. For example, some form controls are missing a ‘label’ tag or are hosted through third-party software.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. 

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations. Some other videos may not have a transcript.

The known limitations of the Canada Life website are being worked on and we aim to have most of these resolved in 2024.