AODA Wizard

Does your organization have employees in Ontario? Make sure your website complies with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.

Disclaimer: This website provides general information that will apply to most organizations with employees in Ontario. We recommend that you seek expert legal advice to understand how the AODA law applies to your specific organization, and validate that the requirements described here are accurate for your circumstances.

The province of Ontario made the AODA law to identify, remove and prevent many of the barriers experienced by people with disabilities so that everyone has equal access to services and information, and is able to participate fully as a member of society.

The AODA regulations set out a number of mandatory accessibility requirements for both public and private organizations regarding customer service, information and communications (including websites), employment, transportation and the design of public spaces.

The requirements include creating policies and plans, providing training, posting certain notices, establishing a feedback process, filing compliance reports and making the content posted on websites accessible.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is an international standard that pre-dates the AODA and describes a set of criteria to determine if the content posted on a website is accessible to people with disabilities.

Following these guidelines makes content accessible to a wide range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these.

The AODA law requires compliance with this WCAG standard to determine that the content posted on the organization's website is accessible.

Most organizations, including franchisors and franchisees, that employ at least one employee in Ontario and provide goods, services or facilities are required to comply with the AODA.

Organizations with 50 or more employees in Ontario are required to prepare additional policies, create a multi-year accessibility plan and ensure that the content posted on their websites conform to the WCAG standard.

The AODA has been designed to achieve incremental results in a series of stages scheduled across pre-defined milestone dates, ultimately leading towards an Ontario that is highly accessible to people with disabilities by year 2025.

Within the "information and communications" section of the AODA. The schedule placed the first round of mandatory legal requirements for certain web content to conform to the WCAG standard by a January 1st 2014 deadline.

If your website launched or had a major refresh after January 1st 2014 then all of the content posted to the site after January 1st 2012 should have been made WCAG 2.0 Level A conformant before the January 1st 2014 deadline.

A website refresh is generally defined as changes to more than 50% of the content, design or technology of the website.

If the website launched or had a major refresh after January 1st 2014, then all of the PDFs and DOCs that were first posted to the website after January 1st 2012 need to conform to WCAG 2.0 Level A.

A website refresh is generally defined as changes to more than 50% of the content, design or technology of the website.

All content that was posted to the website after January 1st 2012 will need to be made WCAG 2.0 Level A conformant. (Content posted before January 1st 2012 has no WCAG requirement.)
All content must be WCAG 2.0 Level A.

There is no WCAG requirement for posting to a website that was launched prior to January 1st 2014 and hasn't had a major refresh.

If the website was launched after January 1st 2014 or has had a site refresh after January 1st 2014. The new content needs to be made WCAG 2.0 Level A conformant.

The content will need to be made WCAG 2.0 Level A conformant.

References