Making your website accessible and complying with AODA
People with disabilities use a variety of assistive technologies to help navigate obstacles, but websites & applications must be built properly for the technology to work.
Ontario has laws to improve accessibility for people with disabilities (Ontario Accessibility Laws). Whether you need to build a new website or modify an existing site, e-dimensionz can implement an accessible solution for WCAG 2.0 and AODA compliance.
Following simple practices for web accessibility will help your business or organization widen it's reach, improve search engine optimization, improve usability, and improves your public image by demonstrating commitment to social responsibility.
Added bonus, search engines give preferential treatment to accessible websites with a boost in their rankings.
Ready to improve your site’s accessibility? We can help.
Accessibility FAQs
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
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.
Beginning January 1, 2014: new public websites, significantly refreshed websites and any web content posted after January 1, 2012 must meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level A.
Beginning January 1, 2021: all public websites and web content posted after January 1, 2012 must meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA other than criteria 1.2.4 (live captions) and 1.2.5 (pre-recorded audio descriptions).
WCAG 2.0 is an internationally accepted standard for web accessibility developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international team of experts.
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.
