Time is running out to meet accessibility act requirements

By Tony Poland, LegalMatters Staff • With 2020 drawing to a close, employers should ensure they are on track to comply with pending accessibility requirements under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (AODA), says Toronto-area employment lawyer Brittany Taylor.

The AODA became law in 2005 with a goal to develop, implement and enforce standards “in order to achieve accessibility for Ontarians with disabilities with respect to goods, services, facilities, accommodation, employment, buildings, structures and premises” by 2025.

Taylor, a partner at Rudner Law, says there were a number of standards established under the legislation, each with their own requirements and deadlines, in order to achieve the province’s goal. Although the AODA applies to most businesses in Ontario (provided they have at least one employee), the requirements under each accessibility standard will depend on the size of the organization. 

Accessibility standards

“One of those accessibility standards concerns accessible sharing of information and accessible means of communication, including websites,” she tells LegalMattersCanada.ca. 

By January 1, 2021, any organization with 50 or more employees that has a website must ensure it is compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 at level AA (with some exceptions). 

Taylor explains that WCAG 2.0 is the most current version of the internet accessibility guidelines managed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which is an international network of accessibility experts. These standards are widely used and relied upon internationally. 

WCAG 2.0 has three levels of compliance: Levels A, AA and AAA. Level A addresses basic accessibility issues, while Level AA goes further to address the most common major accessibility issues on websites. Level AAA is the highest standard. 

Content exception

“There is an exception for web content published before Jan. 1 2012. That content doesn’t have to be brought up to date,” she says. “It’s really trying to target more current content and accessibility on a going-forward basis.”

“There is also an exception which essentially says that if it’s not practicable for the employer to meet those guidelines then this requirement is not going to apply,” Taylor says. “However, we don’t have much detail about what that means.

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“We have some information in terms of what’s going to meet that non-practicable exception but it’s more in the context of goods, services or facilities and actual products,” she adds. “It remains to be seen what an employer is going to have to demonstrate in order to get themselves out of this requirement to make their websites accessible.”

Taylor says a check of most large organizations’ websites reveals sections on accessibility so “people have taken the requirements to heart and have incorporated them into their policies and procedures.”

“It has become just part of the regular everyday work processes for most large businesses,” she says.

The required update is to make a company’s website “as operable by as many groups of people as possible,” Taylor says.

‘Still time’

She says employers who haven’t already updated their websites are falling behind “but there’s still time.”

“We’ve known that this requirement was coming for 10 years so my hope is that employers already have their websites up to date or are in the process of putting in that work to make sure they are compliant by January 1. My only concern is that because it was introduced so long ago that perhaps people have forgotten about it. I hope that’s not the case, but we will have to see,” Taylor says.

There is another looming deadline requiring organizations with 20 or more employees to file an end-of-year accessibility compliance report, she says. That deadline has been pushed back from December 31 to June 30, 2021 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There are many different requirements under the AODA that employers should be checking on,” Taylor says. “The end of the year compliance report is a great time to do that because you’re going to have to be responding to these questions and confirming that you have met your obligations. There are several months left to check if there are any holes that need to be filled before filing the report.”