Accessibility
Disclaimer: The information contained herein is not intended to be a source of legal advice with respect to the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (AODA). The content is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only.
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If you own or help operate a business in Ontario, it is important to be familiar with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (AODA). There is a law that has passed in Ontario to help remove barriers for people with disabilities so they can be better independent and inclusive within society. It has been announced that by 2025, all businesses within Ontario must be accessible for people with disabilities.
It is worth noting that the addressable market for people with disabilities is worth multi-billion dollars of disposable income.
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One criteria for businesses on how to be accessible is for all their website and web content to be accessible for people with disabilities. By law, if you’re a private or non-profit business with 50+ employees or a public sector organization, your website needs to meet the accessibility requirements.
The Government of Ontario has available information on their public website on ‘How to make websites accessible.’
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At AQRedited, we take steps to ensure that all our client’s websites meet the accessibility requirements. We do so not only because it is required by law, but it is the right thing to do!
How we do this is by following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0). We review all our websites with the following guidelines:
Appearance:
We look and use different contrasts of colours to see how they work on a website. There are contrast guidelines that we follow to ensure that the minimum contrast ratios are reflected on the websites. Also, we look at text size and image of text to ensure they are readable for our website visitors.
Functionality:
We look at the user experience for the visitors going on to our websites. This means that there are multiple ways for users to navigate throughout the website. We have processes in place when testing our websites, such as, user test cases and automatic testing and assistive technologies.
Content:
We look and review all our content on the websites to ensure they are readable for our visitors. This will mean having alternative text for all images. Again, we run user test cases and automatic testing and assistive technologies to validate our websites.
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At AQRedited, we understand that creating accessible websites is not a one and done task. We support our clients by regularly reviewing and maintaining their websites to meet the minimum standards of website accessibility. We are not perfect and we may not always be able to ensure full accessibility. If you spot an error or require an alternative accessible format, we may provide upon request.