Ontario has had accessibility legislation with real teeth for longer than most business owners realise. The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act sets binding requirements, and websites are explicitly in scope.
The short version: if you are a private or non profit organisation in Ontario with 50 or more employees, your public website and its content need to meet WCAG 2.0 at level AA. That obligation has been in force for years, and compliance reporting is a recurring requirement rather than a one time exercise.
Who this actually applies to
The 50 employee threshold is the main dividing line for the web content requirements. Smaller organisations have lighter obligations, though the customer service and general accessibility duties still apply broadly.
Two things surprise people. Part time employees count toward the threshold in the way the regulations define it, so a business that thinks of itself as having twenty staff may be over the line. And the requirement covers content you publish, not just the site's structure, so a compliant template does not make an inaccessible PDF acceptable.
What WCAG AA actually asks for
The standard sounds forbidding and mostly is not. The failures that matter cluster in a handful of places, and they are the same ones everywhere.
- Text alternatives for images. Meaningful images need a description. Decorative ones need an explicitly empty alternative so a screen reader skips them instead of reading a filename aloud.
- Labelled form fields. A placeholder is not a label. It vanishes the moment someone starts typing.
- Colour contrast. Body text needs at least 4.5 to 1 against its background. Pale grey on white is the most common failure on otherwise careful designs.
- Keyboard operability. Everything clickable must be reachable with the tab key, with a visible focus indicator. Try it on your own contact form.
- Captions on video. Automatic captions are a start, not a finish.
- Sensible heading structure. One h1, then h2 and h3 in order. Screen reader users navigate by headings the way sighted users skim.
Documents count, and they are usually the gap
This is where otherwise compliant organisations fall down. A PDF price list, an application form, a menu, an annual report. If it is published on your site it is web content, and a scanned image of a document is completely unreadable to assistive technology.
The practical fix is usually to stop publishing information as PDFs where a web page would do. It is better for accessibility, better for search, and better on a phone. Keep PDFs for things genuinely meant to be printed, and tag them properly.
Skip the overlay widgets
You will be sold a script that promises automatic compliance for a monthly fee. Do not buy it.
These tools sit on top of the page and try to patch problems at runtime. They frequently conflict with the screen reader a user has already set up, and the accessibility community has been consistently clear that they make things worse rather than better. In the United States the Federal Trade Commission fined a major overlay vendor a million dollars over its compliance claims. Buying the promise is not the same as meeting the standard.
The business case that is not about compliance
Roughly one in five Canadians has a disability. That is a meaningful share of any customer base, and an inaccessible site excludes them silently, because nobody emails to say they could not use your checkout.
The other benefit is broader than it sounds. Good contrast, clear focus states, real labels and sensible errors help everyone: someone on a cracked phone screen in bright sun, someone using a trackpad with a sore wrist, someone in a hurry. Accessible checkouts convert better for the whole audience, not just part of it.
Where to start
Run an automated scan, which is free and catches the mechanical failures. Then unplug your mouse and try to complete your own enquiry form. Between them you will find most of what matters in an afternoon.
Fix the path that leads to money first: the pages people land on, the forms they fill in, the checkout. Then work outward. We treat this as part of how we design rather than an add on.
See how we work with Canadian businesses, or send us your URL for a plain assessment.
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