Quebec Bill 96 Compliance Checker

Bill 96 requires French content of equivalent prominence. A French translation of every consumer-facing page is the safest default.

Critical for accessibility, screen readers, and search engines. Wrong lang attribute is the most common technical error on bilingual Canadian sites.

Without reciprocal hreflang, Google often serves the wrong language version, suppressing organic traffic in Quebec.

Required for OQLF compliance signaling. Should not be hidden in a footer or behind a hamburger.

Geo-routing or first-visit French default is the recommended pattern. Honour user preference on subsequent visits.

OQLF specifically scrutinizes machine-translated copy. Translations should be reviewed by a francophone marketer; OQLF terminology preferred.

Trademarks may stay in EN if registered, but a French-language descriptor must accompany them. Non-trivial — if you have heavily branded product names, get legal review.

Forms left in EN on a FR page is one of the most cited Bill 96 violations. Includes form validation messages and confirmation pages.

Critical for search snippets in Quebec SERPs. Missing FR metadata is invisible from the user but heavily penalised in Quebec organic rankings.

Helps engines disambiguate the correct linguistic surface for citations and AI overviews.

Where the business has a Quebec presence, French-style addresses are expected on French pages.

Crawlable URL-based language separation outperforms cookie-based switching for organic visibility.

GBP review language is a strong local-pack signal in Quebec.

Often missed; impacts image search visibility and accessibility compliance.