Introduction: Canada’s Journey Toward Digital Accessibility
As digital spaces expand into every facet of life, ensuring these spaces are inclusive and accessible has become a global priority.
Canada has taken substantial steps in this direction, with pioneering regulations like the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) and the Accessible Canada Act (ACA) setting high standards for digital accessibility.
While both acts are transformative, they are often misunderstood, particularly regarding their requirements and the organizations they affect.
In this article, we’ll break down the histories of these two landmark regulations, dispel some common myths, and provide a detailed roadmap to compliance—focusing specifically on the digital accessibility requirements.
We’ll also discuss why Allyant’s end-to-end accessibility services are critical for organizations to meet to excel in conforming to these Canadian accessibility obligations.
AODA: Pioneering Digital Accessibility in Ontario
History and Progression of the AODA
The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) was enacted in 2005 to create a fully accessible Ontario by 2025.
AODA was groundbreaking at the time, representing one of the earliest attempts at legislating accessibility in a Canadian province—or anywhere in the world, quite frankly. The act mandates accessibility across five key areas:
- Customer Service.
- Information and Communications.
- Employment.
- Transportation.
- Design of Public Spaces.
The AODA is particularly concerned with the Information and Communications standard for digital accessibility. This standard requires organizations to ensure that their websites, mobile apps, and digital documents are accessible to people with disabilities.
When the AODA was enacted in 2005, conformance standards for web and digital interfaces were largely immature.
WCAG 1.0 was still the only recognized standard until WCAG 2.0 was released in 2008. With this release, the AODA eventually adopted the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA as its benchmark for digital accessibility conformance in 2011 as part of its Integrated Accessibility Standards Regulation (IASR).
Reporting Timelines and Compliance Deadlines
The AODA has established strict and largely clear reporting requirements for organizations based in the province. The most recent reporting deadline was December 31, 2023, for public or private organizations with 20 or more employees.
While 2023 was a critical year for reporting, that has also come and gone, with many organizations fitting into the 20+ employee bucket still not adhering to WCAG conformance across their digital properties and documents.
This brings us to the 2025 “compliance deadline” that is getting so much attention and perhaps pressure across the accessibility industry. If you are not in compliance today, you have failed to meet the AODA’s requirements as outlined by the June 2023 reporting deadline for WCAG 2.0 AA conformance.
However, 2025 has been a long-standing part of the AODA’s broader strategy since its enactment on Day 1.
This is not a new deadline but rather the culmination of the AODA’s 20-year vision to make Ontario fully accessible by 2025. By then, every aspect of an organization’s operations, including its digital presence, must comply with the WCAG 2.0 Level AA standards.
The reality is that if an organization has missed the 2023 reporting deadline, it is at significant legal risk.
I say this not to scare you but purely based on the fact that we have now seen many examples, both on websites and digital documents, of the Ontario Government starting to enforce the AODA.
With the 2023 reporting deadline well in the rearview mirror and the 2025 fully accessible Ontario date on the near horizon, enforcement of this landmark act is starting to take full effect.
Compliance Requirements and Penalties
Organizations subject to the AODA are required to file accessibility compliance reports that outline how they are meeting the accessibility standards.
This report includes details on whether the organization’s websites, mobile apps, and digital documents conform to the WCAG 2.0 Level AA guidelines.
Penalties, in the form of fines from the Ontario Government under the AODA as published, are important for organizations to consider when building out the ROI on digital accessibility.
As documented in the statute language, individuals can be fined up to $50,000 per day, while corporations can be fined up to $100,000 per day. Fines increase until the violations are resolved.
The reality is, for most organizations, a robust digital accessibility plan working with a vendor like Allyant to resolve web, mobile, and document accessibility likely costs less per year than the daily fines under the AODA if found to be in non-compliance, something to consider!
Here are the core requirements for AODA compliance:
- Websites and Mobile Apps: Websites, including new content on websites, must meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA standards per the current state of the regulations (more on our recommendation for 2.2 AA testing below!). This includes having accessible forms, alternative text for images, and navigational aids that make it easier for users with disabilities to access information.
- Digital Documents: PDFs and other digital documents must be fully accessible. This means that they should be tagged, structured, and designed to work with screen readers and other assistive technologies.
It is important to note that the next formal reporting date for all companies with 20+ employees in Ontario is December 31, 2026. Accessibility can take time and be much more cost-effective when built out over a longer development cycle and a backlog of remediation work for both websites and applications, as well as PDF documents.
With that in mind, if your organization has not already started working against your compliance roadmap, you could face legal action for missing the 2023 deadline while also being up against a 2026 deadline that will approach quickly.
Your team can refer to the official Ontario compliance reporting guide for more details on AODA compliance reporting.
The Accessible Canada Act: Digital Accessibility at the Federal Level
History and Evolution of the ACA
Enacted in 2019, the Accessible Canada Act (ACA) aims to make Canada fully accessible by 2040. While the AODA primarily affects organizations within Ontario, the ACA applies to federal organizations and businesses operating across all provinces.
Its scope is national, ensuring accessibility across federally regulated sectors, including government agencies, telecommunications, transportation, banking, and more.
The ACA requires organizations to remove and prevent barriers across seven priority areas, including Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).
This makes digital accessibility a key compliance focus, particularly for websites, mobile apps, and ICT products.
EN 301 549 and WCAG 2.1 AA Adoption in 2024
A critical and recent update to the ACA is the adoption of EN 301 549, a globally recognized accessibility standard, which went into effect on May 31, 2024.
For context, EN 301 549 is a comprehensive accessibility standard for ICT products and services, covering websites, mobile applications, software, hardware, and digital documents like PDFs.
This adoption represents Canada’s alignment with international accessibility standards, specifically WCAG 2.1 AA.
Organizations subject to the ACA must ensure that their digital assets meet WCAG 2.1 AA requirements. To help with the common confusion I often hear, WCAG 2.1 includes all of the WCAG 2.0 success criteria, but it also extends to more stringent and future-proofed standards such as mobile responsiveness and enhancements for users with cognitive disabilities.
This is specifically important to note for organizations based in Ontario, as the AODA standards point to WCAG 2.0 AA, as outlined above. However, with the federal Accessible Canada Act furthering the requirements to WCAG 2.1 AA, this standard should likely be your organization’s minimum requirement goal.
For more details, refer to the ACA’s official adoption of EN 301 549 here.
Scope of Requirements for ICT Products and Digital Documents
Under the ACA, organizations must ensure that their ICT products are accessible. Not unlike other global regulations such as the European Accessibility Act, which also references EN 301 549 as its compliance standard, the ACA includes accessibility conformance for:
- Websites: Must be tested to and conform with WCAG 2.1 AA. This standard introduces additional success criteria for mobile devices, keyboard navigation, and more user-friendly error identification beyond the baseline 2.0 AA criterion.
- Mobile Applications: Mobile apps must also conform to WCAG 2.1 AA, meeting specific accessibility criteria related to navigation, touch gestures, and interactions with assistive technology that can be specific to mobile devices without keyboard or mouse functionality, for example.
- PDFs and Digital Documents: Like the AODA, the ACA mandates that all digital documents must be accessible to assistive technologies. This includes structuring documents properly and tagging elements to ensure compatibility with screen readers.
- ICT Products: Hardware and software must be designed with accessibility in mind, ensuring that users with disabilities can interact efficiently with digital products.
The Importance of WCAG 2.2 AA Compliance
Although the ACA currently mandates WCAG 2.1 AA compliance, which, in my opinion, makes the AODA’s WCAG 2.0 AA compliance outdated, Allyant strongly recommends that organizations prepare for WCAG 2.2 AA. This is the latest version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which adds further enhancements to address accessibility barriers.
At a minimum, if your organization is just starting its accessibility roadmap and obtaining audits of its website and mobile applications or having a vendor like Allyant remediate its backlog of PDFs, all of this testing and remediation should be done to WCAG 2.2 AA. We do this for every Allyant digital and PDF remediation customer at no additional cost.
Ultimately, by ensuring that digital assets comply with WCAG 2.2 AA, organizations future-proof their investments and avoid the need for extensive updates as regulations evolve.
This can be increasingly important for organizations that have both US and Canadian websites, often sharing a similar code base or web framework.
High-volume plaintiff firms in the U.S. are starting to reference WCAG 2.2 AA as the necessary compliance standard in ADA web accessibility claims since it has been adopted as the most up-to-date standard for over a year.
Common Accessibility Misconceptions Under AODA and ACA
One of the most common misconceptions surrounding AODA and ACA is that achieving minimum compliance is sufficient. Organizations often believe that simply ticking the boxes for WCAG 2.0 or WCAG 2.1 AA compliance is enough to protect them from legal risk.
This could mean simply running an automated testing tool as their only method of assessment (covering roughly one-third of the WCAG success criteria) rather than garnering user feedback through live-user testing by highly trained accessibility engineers with disabilities.
It could also mean installing an accessibility overlay on their website and not performing any other method of digital accessibility testing.
However, digital accessibility is not a one-time project—it requires continuous monitoring, updating, and live-user testing.
This is also why the AODA requires ongoing compliance reporting every three years as part of the statute, which I applaud the Ontario government for as it presses the realization that accessibility must be baked into an organization’s DNA and ongoing processes.
Failing to maintain accessibility standards can expose organizations to:
- Reputational Damage: Failing to meet accessibility obligations can lead to loss of business and a tarnished brand image. I know for certain the AODA and ACA were not built as a means of finding businesses by government entities but were put in place to ensure reasonable access was provided to individuals with disabilities. Ultimately, accessibility is a human right and is simply the right thing to do.
- Lawsuits: Inaccurate or outdated accessibility reports can lead to costly legal actions. Although this has mainly been pursued by high-volume plaintiffs in the U.S., with very clear guidelines and conformance deadlines in Canada and the EU upon us, it is not unreasonable to think this legal activity trickle into other regions in the very near future.
- Fines: As we’ve seen with the AODA recently, now that the Ontario government is reviewing websites and documents with the 2025 vision deadline approaching, penalties for non-compliance can be steep, ranging up to and past $100,000 for organizations.
Why Allyant is the Full-Service Accessibility Partner You Need
A Partner for Holistic Accessibility
Allyant is the only industry leader capable of providing full-service accessibility support across websites, mobile apps, software applications, and both digital documents as well as printed customer communications. Our expertise in live-user accessibility testing, remediation support, and software procurement allows us to cover every aspect of your organization’s AODA and ACA compliance requirements under a single vendor agreement. Here’s how:
- Web and Mobile Accessibility: We test all digital properties to WCAG 2.2 AA, ensuring future-proof compliance.
- PDF Remediation: Allyant’s best-in-class PDF remediation capabilities allow us to process high volumes of documents at scale, delivering WCAG 2.2-compliant documents with a 100% compliance guarantee with every single document.
- Live-User Testing: Automated testing can only detect a fraction of accessibility barriers. That’s why Allyant integrates live-user testing, including people with disabilities, into our unique paired auditing process to identify real-world issues and go beyond just conformance to create highly usable digital experiences.
- Ongoing Support: Accessibility is an ongoing journey. Allyant offers managed services and compliance programs to ensure continuous accessibility monitoring, testing, and reporting—including ensuring you have the utmost confidence in filling out your 2026 AODA compliance reports!
Conclusion
Navigating the digital accessibility landscape in Canada can be overwhelming for many organizations—but understanding the differences and requirements of the AODA and ACA is the first step toward building your team’s compliance roadmap.
By going beyond just checking the box for accessibility, organizations can mitigate legal risks, enhance their customer experience, and differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
Partnering with our team at Allyant ensures that your organization meets and exceeds accessibility standards today and in the future.
If your organization has any questions about the Canadian accessibility requirements or needs a partner to put you on the fast track for holistic compliance, reach out to our team below!
