New AODA Guidelines to Make Your Website Accessible in 2021
November 16th, 2020
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Treefrog specializes in helping companies ensure their websites are AODA compliant.
Does your organization or business fall under any of the categories below?
Businesses and non-profits with 50 or more employees
Municipalities
Libraries (all public and those private libraries with 50 or more employees);
Public-sector organizations; and
Public and private-sector educational institutions (regardless of staffing)
If so, by June 30, 2021, the expectation, as outlined in AODA, is that all websites and web content must be accessible, as per WCAG 2.0 Level AA compliance metrics.
Also, businesses and organizations with over 20 employees must file an accessibility compliance report with the Government of Ontario by June 30, 2021, which was recently extended from Dec 30, 2020.
Businesses and nonprofits must meet the standards of Accessibility rules in Ontario. The Province of Ontario’s website has a full list of accessibility rules and guidelines that should be followed and any critical updates.
What are the top 5 Accessibility Compliance Issues?
1. No alt-text on images
Simply stated, all images require an alt tag.
If an image discloses information that helps understand the message, you must provide alternative text that describes the information.
For more complex images, like a graphic, table, pie chart, etc, your alternative text must summarize the image’s content.
Logos are an exception, but they should have null alt text to allow adaptive technologies to skim over them.
Including backlink on your website is a great way to strengthen your SEO, but with the new AODA rules, you have to be more careful. If you are using terms like “click here” or “learn more,” unfortunately, that is not enough. You now must explain where the link is going before it gets clicked. For example, an acceptable alteration would be “Learn more on how to be AODA compliant.”
You should also avoid opening links in a new window, and you should avoid having multiple links directing to different locations that share the same text.
In some cases, having a particular colour combination can be challenging for someone to see. In the case of a dark background, you need to make the fonts lighter and when you are using a light background, you need to make the fonts darker.
Your contrast ratio should be 4.5:1 for standard text and 3:1 for large text. According to WCAG 2.1, the large-scale text must have at least 18 point or 14 point bold font size.
4. Social media platforms
In essence, social media platforms should be used to supplement your webpage. If you do link your social media content to your website, it must also be accessible to the best of your ability.
5. Audio and video
All prerecorded audio and video must have closed captions and a text transcript. The text transcript must be as descriptive as possible.
The user must have full control over the video, which means they should be able to pause, stop and rewind all audio and video files.
What’s the next step?
Do your research and make sure you are compliant. In case you aren’t taking this seriously, you could receive a fine of up to $100,000 a day if your website doesn’t align with AODA standards. This is a risk you do not want to take.
Visiting the Government of Ontario’s website can help with gathering information, but if you seem to be overwhelmed by the situation, don’t worry. Thankfully our team of web design experts can help you avoid any unforeseen charges.
