AODA Website Compliance ensures that all users, regardless of ability, can access and engage with the website, leading to a more user-friendly online experience.
Adopting AODA Website Compliance for web accessibility offers several advantages for businesses and organizations:
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Broadened Audience Engagement
- By being compliant, the website caters to a diverse user base, inclusive of those with disabilities, promoting more extensive interactions.
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Enhanced SEO Performance
- Accessible websites often receive favored attention from search engines, potentially elevating their search rankings.
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Elevated User Experience
- The integrated accessibility features amplify the website's usability for all visitors.
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Strengthened Brand Reputation
- Showcasing dedication to inclusivity and social responsibility through compliant web design can bolster the public perception of a business or organization.
Why is AODA Website Compliance Essential? 
An accessible website ensures all users, regardless of ability, can access and use the website. This includes visitors who utilize assistive technologies like screen readers, those who depend on alternative input devices, and individuals with visual impairments who might struggle with certain color combinations or text sizes. But the benefits of AODA Website Compliance extend beyond these groups.
Accessible websites cater to a broader audience. This means a business or organization can reach and serve more customers, clients, or members than they might with a non-compliant website. Moreover, consider users with temporary impairments. Someone with a broken arm, or recovering from eye surgery, or even a parent holding a child in one arm, will interact with the web differently. AODA Website Compliance ensures that these users' experiences aren't compromised due to their temporary situation.
In addition to inclusivity, AODA Website Compliance can also have positive effects on a website's SEO. Search engines aim to deliver the best user experience and often rank accessible websites higher due to their user-friendly features.
AODA Website Compliance isn't just a mandate—it's an opportunity to foster inclusivity, expand reach, improve user experience, and enhance brand reputation.
When Should You Implement AODA Accessibility?
While AODA Website Compliance can be integrated at any phase of your website's lifecycle, initiating it during the early stages, specifically the design and development phase, proves to be the most beneficial. Embedding accessibility from the onset not only streamlines the process but also substantially curtails potential costs. Retrofitting an existing site to be AODA-compliant might necessitate extensive changes to site design, content, and structure, making it a more labor-intensive and costly endeavor.
Moreover, building with AODA Website Compliance in mind from the start ensures a more cohesive and user-friendly interface. It allows designers and developers to factor in all users' needs, from those with specific disabilities to the general population, ensuring a smoother browsing experience for everyone. On the flip side, waiting until later stages can sometimes mean compromising on design or functionality to accommodate necessary accessibility features.
How Can I Ensure Complete Compliance?
The key to successful accessibility integration lies in adopting these practices right from the inception of a project. Moreover, precision in incorporation is paramount; any inaccuracies can turn the process arduous and lengthy.
Collaborating with a seasoned team of AODA Website Compliance experts can streamline this, guiding you to devise and enact strategies efficiently.
If your goal is to either establish a new website or revamp an existing one, e-dimensionz stands ready to craft solutions in line with WCAG 2.0 and AODA Website Compliance standards.
Accessibility Standards in Ontario Request an AODA Compliance Quote
AODA Website Compliance & Accessibility FAQs
Who must comply?
By law, you must make new and significantly refreshed public websites accessible if you are:
- a private or non-profit organization with 50+ employees; or
- a public sector organization
Accessibility requirements for organizations
The requirements and deadlines you need to follow depend on the type and size of your organization. You are exempt if you are self-employed and do not have employees.
- businesses or non-profits
- public sector organizations
- municipalities
WCAG 2.0 Guidelines
WCAG 2.0 is an internationally accepted standard for web accessibility developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international team of experts.
Levels of web accessibility
Each guideline has three levels of accessibility: A, AA and AAA. Newly created or refreshed websites must meet level A. Later, your website will need to meet Level AA. Meeting Level AAA is not required at this time.
In most cases you must meet the Level A criteria before you can meet the Level AA criteria.
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