Accessibility

Roughly 27% of Canadians aged 15 and older live with one or more disabilities. That's about 6.2 million people, according to Statistics Canada's Canadian Survey on Disability. Many of them rely on assistive technologies like screen readers, keyboard navigation, voice control, or adjusted display settings to use the web the same way everyone else does.

When a website isn't built with those needs in mind, those people hit walls. A form that can't be navigated without a mouse. A video with no captions. An image with no description. A button that only works if you can see the colour change. None of these feel like major decisions during a build, but together they can make a site effectively unusable for a significant portion of your audience.

The human case comes first

It's worth being direct about this: the strongest reason to build accessible websites isn't regulatory pressure. It's that exclusion has a real cost for real people. Someone trying to book an appointment, read a product description, or contact a business deserves the same experience regardless of how they interact with a screen.

Beyond the ethical dimension, there's a straightforward business case. Accessible websites reach more people. They tend to perform better in search because the same practices that help screen readers, like clear heading structure, descriptive link text, and properly labelled images, also help search engines understand content. Page speed, logical layout, and keyboard usability improve the experience for everyone, not just users with disabilities.

Accessibility also signals a level of care and professionalism that visitors notice even when they don't consciously name it. A site that's easy to navigate, well-structured, and clearly written feels trustworthy. One that isn't tends to create friction before a visitor has even decided whether they're interested in what you offer.

The regulatory framework in Canada

Canada's approach to accessibility operates at both federal and provincial levels, and the two frameworks have different scopes.

The Accessible Canada Act (ACA), which received Royal Assent in June 2019, set an overarching goal: a barrier-free Canada by January 1, 2040. The Act applies to federally regulated organizations — federal government departments and agencies, Crown corporations, banks, broadcasters, telecom companies, and interprovincial transportation providers like airlines and railways. These organizations are required to proactively identify and remove barriers across seven priority areas. One of those areas is information and communication technology, including websites and digital content.

Under the ACA, regulated organizations must publish accessibility plans, establish feedback mechanisms, and produce progress reports. Accessibility Standards Canada develops the technical standards that inform those requirements, drawing heavily from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which are published by the W3C and serve as the international benchmark for web accessibility.

Ontario and provincial legislation

At the provincial level, Ontario has the most developed framework. The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), passed in 2005, set a target of full accessibility in Ontario by 2025 and applies to both public sector organizations and private businesses with one or more employees. Its Integrated Accessibility Standards Regulation includes specific requirements for web content: public websites and web content published after January 1, 2012 must conform to WCAG 2.0 Level A, and content published after January 1, 2014 must meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA, with some exceptions.

For Ontario businesses, this isn't aspirational. Compliance is legally required and enforced through audits and penalties. Organizations that fail to file accessibility compliance reports or meet the standards can face fines of up to $100,000 per day for corporations. In practice, enforcement has been inconsistent, but the legal obligation is real and the risk of falling behind is growing as standards are updated and scrutiny increases.

Other provinces are at varying stages. British Columbia, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia each have accessibility legislation in place or in development. The federal trajectory under the ACA is expected to pull provincial frameworks in a consistent direction over the coming years as the 2040 barrier-free goal approaches.

What this means for your website

If your organization falls under federal regulation or operates in Ontario, some level of web accessibility isn't optional. But the more useful frame for most businesses is this: accessibility is one of the cleaner ways to improve a website across every dimension at once: usability, SEO, legal posture, and the experience you're offering to a large portion of your audience.

The practical work starts with an audit. Understanding where your current site falls short against WCAG 2.1 AA gives you a clear picture of what needs to change and how to prioritize it. Some fixes are straightforward: adding alt text, improving colour contrast, labelling form fields correctly. Others require structural changes that are best addressed during a website redesign rather than patched onto an existing build. Our web accessibility services cover both: audits that identify the gaps and implementation work that closes them.

Accessibility and SEO are also more connected than most people expect. Proper heading structure, descriptive alt text, meaningful link labels, and fast load times are requirements for both. Improving one tends to lift the other, which means accessibility work often pays off in search visibility at the same time. If you're thinking about where to start, that overlap is a useful place to focus first.