Ontario’s Accessibility Law – The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) became law in 2005 with the aim to create a fully accessible province by 2025. The AODA includes rules that all businesses and organizations have to follow to identify, remove and prevent barriers to accessibility in Ontario. The AODA has specific dates and guidelines for organizations to follow to help you progress towards being a fully accessible by the 2025 deadline.
One important standard that the AODA includes is the Information and Communication Standard which lays out the requirements for Internet and intranet websites. That’s because there are accessibility standards under the law that directly apply to web and digital accessibility. One of these is the Information and Communications Standards (Part II of the AODA).
Under Section 14, “Accessible Websites and Web Content,” organizations covered by this law are required to ensure that their websites are fully accessible
There are financial penalties for failing to comply with the AODA. These can be steep, depending on the type of organization that’s breaking the law.
Web Accessibility Requirements of the AODA – Under this legislation, websites must adhere to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. WCAG 2.0 is an internationally accepted set of guidelines developed by a group of web accessibility experts from all over the world. It provides step-by-step instructions on how to make various components of a website fully accessible, as well as explanations about the importance of each criterion.Under the AODA, websites and web-based applications must currently conform to the minimum level, A. But eventually, they must conform to most of the WCAG AA level criteria. There are different AODA compliance deadlines depending on the standards and type and size of the organization.
Our accessibility experts are handson with accessibility standards,WCAG levels, regulations & deadlines and will work with you on this for your websites.
Accessibility Tools:
- JAWS (Screen reader) / NVDA / Voiceover
- WAVE (accessibility evaluation tool)
- Total Validator (Accessibility testing)
