Accessibility statement

The Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation undertakes to make this site accessible in accordance with the following legislation: Law of 19 July 2018 on the accessibility of websites and mobile applications of public organisations.

This accessibility statement applies to the websites of the Belgian embassies and consulates abroad (https://[country].diplomatie.belgium.be).

 
Compliance status

Our website partly meets the accessibility requirements as described in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 level AA. Not all the requirements were met.

A sample was taken of a number of sites using the BOSA Accessibility Check tool.

 
Non-accessible content

A number of pages still contain a number of technical and content shortcomings in terms of accessibility.

Technical:

  • the inconsistent use of alternative text in images (WCAG criterion 1.1.1)
  • the absence of the description of links used as anchors (WCAG criterion 1.1.1)
  • the HTML structure of the titles should be improved for some pages (in particular the coherence of the hierarchy of H-tags for titles and subheadings) (WCAG criterion 1.3.1)
  • the use of an erroneous tag when underlining text (WCAG criterion 1.3.1)
  • the insufficient contrast between text and background on some pages (WCAG criterion 1.4.3)
  • the absence of the ability to navigate to or around content blocks (WCAG criterion 2.4.1)
  • the non-use of the title attribute in iframes (WCAG criterion 4.1.2)

Content:

  • many texts are not written for the web
  • too little clear, official language is still being used.

Furthermore, many PDF documents do not meet the accessibility standards. The same applies to embedded videos, for which no subtitles are provided.

 
Proposed alternatives

Currently, there is not always an available alternative for non-accessible elements.

 
Contact details

If you have any questions or comments about the accessibility of our website, you can contact us via this form

Are you not satisfied with the answer you got? Then please contact the federal Ombudsman:

Federal Ombudsman
Rue de Louvain - Leuvensestraat 48 box 6
B-1000 Brussels

E-mail: contact@federaalombudsman.be
Website: Federal Ombudsman

 
Improvement plan

The FPS Foreign Affairs is working on a revamped, fully accessible website. This site will be ready in the course of 2022.

In order to make the current website as accessible as possible, a quick-win analysis will be carried out by the end of January 2021.
 

This declaration was drawn up on 09/12/2020.

The last revision of the declaration took place on 09/12/2020