Quebec's Law 25, web accessibility and audio versions: what is required, and what is not
Law 25 protects personal information; it does not govern website accessibility. Web accessibility for Quebec public bodies falls under the SGQRI 008 standard. What each text actually requires, and where an audio version really sits.
A lot of people type "Law 25 accessibility Quebec website" into a search box, and the phrase runs two unrelated things together. Law 25 is real and it matters, but it says nothing about web accessibility. Website accessibility in Quebec comes from a different text entirely. It is worth untangling the two right away, with sources, before saying where an audio version belongs in this picture. It is not where people usually expect.
Law 25 protects data, not accessibility
Law 25, adopted in 2021 and rolled out in stages through 2024, is a personal information protection law. It governs how an organisation, public or private, collects, keeps and uses the data of its users. It says nothing about whether a site is readable by a person with a disability, nothing about colour contrast, nothing about screen reader compatibility.
What it does require, and that touches a website, is of a different kind. Since September 2023, any organisation that collects personal information by technological means must draft "a privacy policy in clear and simple language and publish it," in the words of the Commission d'acces a l'information. It must also publish the title and contact details of its privacy officer. These are real, checkable obligations, but they are about privacy, not about access to information for someone who cannot read the screen the usual way. Mixing the two leads you to tick the wrong box.
Quebec web accessibility has its own standard
The text that actually governs website accessibility in Quebec is called the SGQRI 008 standard. Its version 3.0 has been in force since 29 April 2024. It builds on the international WCAG 2.1 rules at Level AA (all Level A and AA success criteria, with two exceptions around live captions and audio description), and it adds a few requirements from version 2.2.
The key point: this standard applies to public bodies, those covered by the Act respecting the governance and management of the information resources of public bodies and government enterprises (chapter G-1.03). Government departments, the health and education networks, and state enterprises are bound by it. The head of the organisation must ensure compliance, carry out the necessary audits, and keep an accessibility page up to date. At the federal level, the Accessible Canada Act separately covers federally regulated entities, which is yet another framework.
What none of these texts does is impose web accessibility on Quebec private companies at large, the way the European Accessibility Act is starting to do in Europe. A small business, a media outlet, a law firm in Quebec has, as of today, no general obligation to make its site accessible. That is a real difference from the European situation, and it is better known than assumed. If you are curious how the European public sector rules read, we cover them in the EU web accessibility directive for the public sector.
Where an audio version fits
Here is the honest answer, the one that matters if you are thinking about narrating your site: neither Law 25 nor the SGQRI 008 standard requires an audio version. It is not a compliance box. On the technical side, the WCAG benchmark is that text content is properly structured and readable by a screen reader, the software that voices the interface for a blind user. An article audio player is not that software and does not replace it.
We would rather say this plainly than sell an audio version as a shortcut to compliance, because that would be false. It is the same line we take in our piece on the difference between an audio version and a screen reader: two tools, two audiences, two functions. A Quebec public site still has to pass the SGQRI 008 on its text, audio or not.
That does not make audio pointless, quite the opposite. It serves the spirit of accessibility where strict compliance stops: a person with dyslexia following the highlighted text at the pace of the voice, someone tired of a long screen, someone listening on the move. It is a layer of comfort and inclusion, offered on top of an already compliant site, never in its place. Framed that way, it keeps its promises.
What a Quebec publisher should check before narrating
If you decide to add audio for those good reasons, the technical question shifts to the quality of French reading, and there a tool built for France has limits on a Quebec text. The vocabulary (courriel, magasiner, fin de semaine) reads fine, but the accent stays French of France and place names need setting. We cover this in Quebec French and text to speech: worth reading before you test, so you are not caught out.
On the tool itself, our stance fits in one line, the one the French text to speech page carries: read one language well rather than thirty badly. For Quebec content, that means a clean, intelligible read, proper nouns you can fix once and for all, and an accent that will stay French of France. Nothing more, nothing less, and above all nothing that lets you off the real obligation, the SGQRI 008 standard on your text. Compliance runs through the content and its structure; audio sits above it, for the comfort of anyone who would rather listen.
Give your articles a voice with WeDispatch
This blog is itself voiced by WeDispatch. Curious how it sounds on your content?
Book a demo