AODA Website Accessibility Requirements in Ontario: What Businesses Must Meet

If customers, clients, or the public can visit your business online, Ontario's accessibility law probably has something to say about how that website works. The AODA website accessibility requirements apply to a wide range of Ontario organizations, not just government bodies or large corporations — and the obligations quietly scale up as your organization grows. Getting caught off guard because you assumed your business was "too small" or "too new" to be covered is one of the more common ways businesses fall behind.

This article explains, in plain language, how Ontario's accessibility framework treats websites, who it reaches, and what a business actually needs to do about it.

The Law Behind the Requirement

Ontario's Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (AODA) sets out a province-wide goal of making Ontario accessible to people with disabilities. The specific, practical rules businesses must follow sit in regulations made under AODA, one of which — commonly grouped under the "Information and Communications" standard — addresses how organizations must make their websites and web content accessible.

In practice, this means AODA is not just a policy statement. It creates concrete legal obligations for private businesses, non-profits, and public-sector bodies alike, with the details depending on your organization's size and sector.

Who Actually Has to Comply

This is where many business owners get tripped up. Ontario's accessibility rules do not apply identically to every organization:

• Public sector organizations generally face the earliest and broadest obligations.
• Large private-sector and non-profit organizations (measured by employee count) generally carry more extensive website obligations than smaller ones.
• Small organizations typically have lighter obligations, but "small" does not always mean "exempt" — some duties reach organizations of every size.

Because the exact employee-count thresholds and timelines are set by regulation and have been phased in over the years, do not assume your business falls outside scope without checking the current rule that applies to your specific size and sector.

What "Accessible Website" Actually Means

Ontario's rules point businesses toward an internationally recognized technical standard for web accessibility — a widely used set of guidelines that address things like:

• Whether a screen reader can interpret your page content
• Whether your site can be navigated without a mouse
• Whether text has enough contrast to be read by people with low vision
• Whether video content includes captions or another alternative

The specific version and conformance level of that standard, and exactly which parts of your website it reaches (public-facing pages, internal web applications, PDFs and other documents), are set out in the regulation and have been updated over time. Because this is exactly the kind of detail that changes, verify the current standard and scope that applies to your organization before treating any summary — including this one — as the final word.

Common Compliance Gaps We See

• Assuming a modern-looking or "mobile-friendly" site is automatically accessible — it usually is not, without deliberate work.
• Overlooking PDFs, forms, and downloadable documents, which are often swept into the same requirement as the website itself.
• Treating accessibility as a one-time fix rather than something checked again after every redesign or new feature.
• Not documenting the steps taken, which matters if your organization is ever asked to demonstrate compliance.

Practical Next Steps

• [ ] Confirm which size and sector category your organization falls into under Ontario's accessibility rules
• [ ] Identify the specific technical standard and conformance level currently required for your category
• [ ] Have your website, including forms and key documents, assessed against that standard
• [ ] Document what you've done and when, in case you need to show your compliance efforts later
• [ ] Build a review step into future website changes, rather than treating this as a one-time project

Frequently asked questions