Ontario website accessibility, explained for service businesses

Who the rule covers, and from when

According to the Province's guidance:

• Who: designated public sector organisations, and businesses or non-profit organisations with 50 or more employees.
• Since when: January 1, 2021, for public websites.
• Which content: public websites, and web content posted after January 1, 2012.
• Who is responsible: the organisation that controls the website, either directly or through a contract with a provider.

That last point matters if you hire a designer. Handing the build to an agency doesn't hand over the responsibility, so the requirement should be written into the brief and the contract.

Internal sites such as intranets aren't held to the same requirement for most organisations. The regulation behind all of this is Ontario Regulation 191/11, and the official page explains where the requirements may not apply after best efforts.

What WCAG 2.0 Level AA means in practice

WCAG is an international set of web accessibility criteria, grouped into levels A, AA and AAA. The Ontario guidance requires Level A first, then AA, with two exclusions: live captions and pre-recorded audio descriptions.

On a typical trades or home-service website, Level AA mostly comes down to these areas:

Text and contrast

• Body text and button labels must contrast enough with their background. Pale grey on white is the most common failure.
• Text must stay readable when a visitor zooms the page to twice its size.

Structure

• Pages use real headings in a logical order, not just bold text.
• Links say where they go. "Water heater replacement" beats "click here".

Images and media

• Meaningful images have text alternatives. A photo of a finished bathroom should say so; a decorative divider doesn't need a description.
• Pre-recorded videos with speech need captions.

Interaction

• Everything works with a keyboard alone: menus, buttons, accordions.
• Focus is visible, so a keyboard user can see where they are.
• Nothing flashes rapidly or moves without a way to pause it.

Phone and contact

• Tap targets are large enough, and the phone number is real text that can be read aloud, not part of an image.

Common failures on service-business websites

From the sites we review, these come up again and again:

1. Phone number inside a banner image. Screen readers can't read it, and nobody can tap it.
2. Light grey text on photos. Looks stylish, fails contrast, and is hard to read in sunlight.
3. Sliders that auto-rotate. Hard to read and hard to pause.
4. Icons with no labels. A phone icon with no text gives a screen reader nothing to announce.
5. Headings chosen for size, not structure. Skipping from the page title straight to a small heading confuses navigation.
6. Before-and-after galleries with no descriptions. The proof is invisible to some visitors.
7. PDF price sheets or brochures. Often inaccessible; put the content on a page instead.

A 15-minute self-check

You can run this on your homepage and one service page without special tools.

1. Zoom to 200%. Does everything still fit and read without sideways scrolling on a laptop?
2. Unplug the mouse. Press Tab repeatedly. Can you reach the menu, the phone number and every button, and can you see where you are?
3. Read your images. Hover or inspect the main photos. Do they have sensible descriptions?
4. Check headings. Do the headings, read alone, outline the page?
5. Squint at contrast. Stand back from the screen. Is any text hard to read?
6. Watch a video muted. Are there captions?
7. Try a phone in daylight. Can you find and tap the number with one thumb?

Each "no" is a fix to list. If you have 50 or more employees, a full audit against WCAG 2.0 AA by a qualified accessibility professional is the safer route.

A worked example: why it pays even when not required

Suppose your site gets 1,000 visits a month and 3% of visitors call, text or email: 30 contacts. If poor contrast and tiny tap targets cause even one in ten of those visitors to give up, fixing them could recover around three contacts a month. At a 50% close rate and a $750 average job, that is roughly $1,100 a month in work, from changes that also make the site easier for everyone.

Briefing a designer on accessibility

Put these lines in your website brief, whatever the size of your company:

• "The site must meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA."
• "Provide a short report showing how key pages were checked before launch."
• "Phone numbers, prices and key messages must be real text, not images."
• "All videos with speech must have captions."
• "No overlay plug-in will be used in place of fixing the site itself."

Our website brief guide shows where these lines fit in a full brief.

Keeping it accessible after launch

Accessibility is not a one-time task. New photos without descriptions, a pop-up added for a seasonal promotion, or a PDF price list uploaded in a hurry can each undo good work. A quarterly repeat of the self-check above, plus a rule that every new image gets a description, keeps most sites in good shape.

How we handle accessibility

We build every site to accessible standards and check contrast, headings, alt text and keyboard use as part of our website care routine. For new sites, these checks are part of the build described on our website design page. We don't certify compliance or give legal advice; for that, rely on the Province's guidance and a qualified professional.

To ask about your own site, call, text or email us.