We’re talking more and more about climate change, inclusion, and social justice. But as soon as we add the word “digital” to these issues, everything quickly becomes vague for many people. And yet our websites, apps, marketing campaigns, and AI projects have a very real impact, both on the environment and on society.
This is exactly we discussed recenty with François Burra, co‑founder of the Responsible and Sustainable Digital Collective and consultant at Décarbonade. If you work closely or remotely in web, design, product, marketing, or AI in Quebec, this reflection concerns you directly. And the good news is that there are already tools, a community, and even awards to highlight positive local initiatives.
In this post, we’ll clarify what “responsible and sustainable digital” means, explain why accessibility is an essential component, and suggest concrete ways to improve your digital projects.
François Burra has been working in the digital sector in Quebec for about fifteen years: user experience (UX), product management, business strategy… He knows the ecosystem very well. For the past five years, he has focused his activities on decarbonization and digital sobriety. Among his achievements are a best‑practice framework for digital professionals and the creation of the digital decarbonization studio Décarbonade.
His definition of responsible digital is both simple and rich: it means taking into account all the non‑monetary impacts of digital technology. In other words, we don’t stop at revenue, clicks, or conversions; we also consider the ethical, social, economic, and environmental effects of the technologies we design and deploy.
In concrete terms, this means anticipating and reducing the negative consequences of our digital products right from the design phase. We ask questions such as: does what we’re creating exclude certain people? Is it very energy‑intensive for limited benefits? Does it encourage phenomena like addiction, misinformation, or inequity? Responsible digital means accepting to confront these issues from the start, rather than thinking about them at the very end of the project.
One of the striking points in François Burra’s talk is the direct link he draws between responsible digital and accessibility. Too often, accessibility is seen as a “nice‑to‑have” or a regulatory constraint. In a responsible approach, it is exactly the opposite: accessibility and inclusion are integral parts of the process.
Today, many people are excluded from digital technology or face major barriers:
Thinking about responsible digital means asking what this concretely means for a person who browses with a screen reader, for someone with low vision who depends on good contrast and visible buttons, or for a caregiver trying to help a parent on an online portal.
A well‑structured site, with clear hierarchy, meaningful alternative text, forms that can be used with a keyboard, and properly sized icons does not benefit only some people: it improves everyone’s experience while reinforcing organic search performance.
About five years ago, when he began looking more closely at responsible digital, François Burra realized that in Montreal very few people were actively addressing this topic. People were mainly talking about innovation, AI, and growth, and much less about sobriety or the social and environmental impact of digital technology.
From this observation came the idea of creating a collective that would serve as an anchor point for this scattered community. The Responsible and Sustainable Digital Collective was co‑founded by five people and really took shape starting in 2023. It now brings together a community of more than 1,500 people on LinkedIn: professionals in web, design, accessibility, marketing, IT, AI, and more.
This collective makes it possible to share resources and best practices, to give visibility to local initiatives, to create connections between different areas of expertise, and to demonstrate that another way of doing digital is possible, right here in Quebec.
To give even more visibility to the topic—and to make it attractive and inspiring—the collective launched the first Responsible and Sustainable Digital Awards. The aim is to reward the players in Quebec who are implementing more responsible digital projects and to create a ripple effect in the ecosystem.
The awards are divided into four main categories:
Applications are open until March 6, and Ciao will have the honour of taking part in evaluating the projects submitted in the categories related to accessibility and the digital divide. The awards ceremony is scheduled for Earth Day, April 22, which sends a strong signal: digital technology is an integral part of the ecological and social transition.
A common question is: what can we do, in a simple and quick way, to make our projects more responsible?
From an environmental perspective, François Burra offers two very concrete recommendations for people who manage public websites:
Reducing a page’s weight means, for example, slimming down JavaScript files, limiting parallax effects, avoiding auto‑play videos, compressing images, and removing superfluous decorative elements. As a bonus, a lighter site is often faster, more pleasant to use, and better ranked.
From an accessibility standpoint, the process starts at the design stage. Imagining scenarios of poor connection, for instance, encourages more rational use of resources and often goes hand in hand with better content structure. A well‑organized site with clear navigation will be both more accessible to people using assistive technologies and easier for search engines to index.
Thinking from the outset about people with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive limitations—or simply about users accessing a service on a small screen, on the go—leads to interfaces that are more robust, more inclusive, and more sustainable.
Responsible and sustainable digital is not about giving up technology; it is about choosing how we design and use it. By integrating ethical, social, economic, and environmental dimensions from the outset, by treating accessibility as a pillar rather than a constraint, and by drawing on an engaged community, we can profoundly transform our digital practices.
Whether you are a designer, developer, product manager, marketing specialist, head of a public service, or involved in an AI project, you hold part of the lever. Measuring, streamlining, making things accessible, questioning uses, highlighting best practices: these are all concrete actions which, taken together, contribute to digital technology that truly takes its impacts on the world into account.
The movement is already underway in Quebec. It’s up to each of us to take part, at our own scale, so that the digital world we build is useful, inclusive, and sustainable.