Orange Confort+: Rethinking Web Accessibility for All
For several years, Orange has been committed to making the web accessible to everyone, especially people with disabilities.
Among its initiatives, the Confort+ extension stands out. Designed to enhance the browsing experience, it required modernization to meet new technological and ergonomic standards.
To take on this challenge, Orange called on Onepoint’s expertise to support the modernization of the Confort+ extension, making the web even more accessible to people with disabilities.
Confort+: an Extension Serving Accessibility
The Confort+ extension allows users to personalize web page displays according to their needs. Settings include text size, contrast, or the addition of a reading ruler. Available on Firefox, Edge, and Chrome, this assistive technology is deployed on Orange’s internal sites, such as its intranet, and can also be integrated into any other website.
The Confort+ project stands out for its open-source approach—an initiative led by Orange and continued through this collaboration. The source code, backlog, versions, and documentation are all available on GitHub.
The extension relies exclusively on native browser technologies, avoiding dependencies on third-party frameworks like Angular or React, and reducing the risk of conflicts with frameworks already used on the websites where Confort+ is deployed.
An Agile Collaboration to Modernize Orange’s Confort+ Extension
The collaboration with Onepoint enabled Orange to modernize the Confort+ extension while addressing increasing digital accessibility requirements. The project’s flexibility allowed interventions to be adjusted according to evolving specifications, ensuring a gradual ramp-up to near full-time involvement in the second half of 2024. This approach provided Orange with perfectly tailored support at each stage.
In addition to the technical dimension, design and ergonomics expertise enhanced interface decisions, while project management via GitHub facilitated coordination. This two-and-a-half-year partnership reflects Orange’s trust in Onepoint to lead complex, strategic projects. It also strengthened our presence in the digital accessibility ecosystem, notably at the 2024 a11y Paris event.
The redesign of Confort+ is both technical and ergonomic. On Orange’s side, we chose to focus on usability and on specifying interaction methods for various disability situations. We therefore needed a partner who could ensure technical accessibility and be attentive enough to adapt to our needs. Onepoint proved to be the right choice.
New Generation of Confort+: Challenges to Overcome
To meet user expectations and keep up with browser evolutions, Orange launched a redesign project structured around several key areas:
- A new ergonomics: rethinking navigation, interactions, and overall design for a more intuitive experience, aligned with a universal design approach.
- Code overhaul: the extension, which had not been maintained for five years, required a complete rebuild to ensure maintainability and performance.
- Technical standards update: adapting to the Manifest V3 standard ensures compatibility with recent browser versions.
A High-Performance Extension
Thanks to this collaboration with Onepoint, the new generation of Confort+ positions itself as a scalable solution tailored to current requirements. The extension now offers over 20 customizable settings, organized into 9 usage modes, allowing each user to tailor their browsing experience to their specific needs. Moreover, settings are stored within the browser, ensuring continuity across multiple sites and tabs.
Confort+ is a project that stands out in many ways: a browser extension is an unusual technical context for web developers, it’s an open-source project with a strong history and notable popularity, and the field of accessibility and ergonomics is pushed to its highest level. We are proud to collaborate with Orange on this project, which gives a humanistic meaning to our technical expertise.
The Confort+ extension currently has, according to the latest available figures, 99 daily users on Firefox, 974 on Chrome, and 49 on Edge. These actual figures are likely higher, especially for Orange users accessing it through their IT-managed browser, as well as self-hosted users. As the new version has not yet been released, these numbers refer to the previous version.
A Strategic Project for an Inclusive Web
Onepoint played a key role in the success of this project by mobilizing its technical and creative teams and working closely with various Orange entities. This project successfully aligned innovation, technological expertise, and a strong commitment to accessibility.
The accessibility of a website or application relies on effective coordination between technical experts and user experience experts. These two professions have different perspectives and speak different languages. Only through attentive listening between these two fields can an exemplary final result be achieved.