AODA Website Compliance Checklist: A Guide for Ontarians (2023)

Many people will require assistive technology to access and engage with your site, including screen readers and keyboard navigation. Legal requirements for web accessibility state that your website needs to be compatible with technology such as this to cater to disabled users.

Many disabled users need clear labels and instructions to engage with certain elements on your site. Be sure to clearly label form fields, tables, and charts to provide visitors with an accessible experience. 

AODA color compliance requires websites to have a color contrast ratio of at least 4:5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for larger text. The same ratio of 3:1 applies to graphics. 

To make your content easier to read and scan using assistive technology, it helps to incorporate numbered and bulleted lists where it makes sense to do so. 

CAPTCHA codes are generally visual in nature, but since some website visitors might be visually impaired, it’s important to have audio alternatives available. 

Website visitors need to be able to engage with every element of your website, including images, audio files, and videos. AODA compliance requires you to add alternative text to images and captions to video and audio files. Users should also have the option to stop audio output at any point.

People with mobility conditions and neurocognitive conditions often use eye-tracking devices to engage with online content. By looking at specific parts of a screen, a visitor can use input fields, on-screen keyboards, and any other technology that’s enabled for disabled users. 

Since flashing content can cause seizures in some users, it’s important to either remove that type of content completely or limit it to 3 seconds or less. It doesn’t help to provide visitors with the ability to turn the content off either as they might not be able to do it in time. 

Not only should you aim to keep your menus simple, but they should be standard across all pages. This makes it easy for your visitors to understand and they know exactly what to expect. 

Lastly, make sure that if a user has to zoom in on text or any of the elements on your site that it doesn’t become distorted to the point of being unusable. Ideally, visitors should be able to zoom in on specific elements.