What Is Accessibility Standards Canada? What Happens If I Don’t Comply With Aca?

By Author: Riley Claire
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The Accessible Canada Act (ACA) falls under federal jurisdiction and is a landmark non-discrimination law that applies to most of organizations in Canada. This law states that by 2040 those barriers that affect Canadian disabled people will be removed in entirety. This law is said to be one of the best accessible laws in Canada. In this article, you will get to know about the accessibility standards of Canada and the penalty for not complying with ACA.

To know about the Accessibility standards of Canada, it is better to first understand about Accessibility Canada Act.

The Accessible Canada Act (ACA) falls under federal jurisdiction and is a landmark non-discrimination law that applies to most of the organizations in Canada. This law states that by 2040 those barriers that affect Canadian disabled people will be removed in entirety. This law is said to be one of the best accessible laws in Canada. In this article, you will get to know about the accessibility standards of Canada and the penalty ...
... for not complying with ACA.

To know about the Accessibility standards of Canada, it is better to first understand about Accessibility Canada Act.

What is Accessible Canada Act (ACA)?

The Canadian Human Rights Act was formed in 1977 to prohibit discrimination based on religion, sex, race or disability. General guidelines are contained in this act that helps to protect Canadian citizens’ interests with respect to their day-to-day activities.

Again, in 2018, Carla Qualtrough holding the position of “Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities,” proposed the Accessible Canada Act referred to as “Bill C-81.” Justin Trudeau was in favor of this act and ensured that Canadian disabled people get the best of online and physical environment services through this act.

In June 2019, ACA compliance was made mandatory, providing equal opportunities to all, including the disabled community.

Accessibility Standards of Canada:

The Accessibility Standards of Canada take into consideration the following key factors:

1. Built environments: Disabled people should be able to move freely in public spaces and buildings

2. Service delivery: Accessibility of basic services to all

3. Information and technology: Digital content should be easily accessible by everyone and thus actively engage with technologies

4. Employment: Equal access to accessible workplaces and employment opportunities should be provided to Canadian citizens

5. Procurement: Everyone should be able to easily buy services and accessible goods

6. Transport: Disabled citizens should be benefitted from a barrier-free transport network.

ACA Compliance:

Compliance applies to three main groups as follows:

1. The private sector, which includes banking, transport and telecommunications

2. Companies that are state-owned but operate as private businesses

3. Government entities, which includes Parliament and Govt. of Canada.

ACA regulations:

If a website or business owner is ACA compliant, then they need to prove it by submitting the following reports at frequent intervals:

1. Accessible strategy: The steps an organization takes to comply with the ACA regulations should be outlined in this document, including creating an accessible website. This strategy is publicly published and updated every three years and is a legal requirement.

2. Accessibility progress reports: The implementation of an accessibility strategy is outlined through these reports. These reports should be publicly available to both website visitors as well as the government.

The process of making a website ACA compliant:   

The website is audited to ascertain the presence of accessibility issues. The site can be manually audited, but the approach is considered to be both time-consuming and costly. To make sure that any important factors are not missed out, an automated accessibility solution can be used.

Test automation tools such as UserWay, accessible etc. can be used for optimal outcomes. Once the website is scanned, these tools provide a detailed report that outlines those accessibility issues that need to be addressed.

Most accessibility issues will be automatically fixed by tools such as accessible, while the site can be monitored on an ongoing basis.

What happens if I don’t comply with ACA?

ACA is enforced by Canadian Accessibility Standards Development Organization (CASDO). The leading institution of ACA is the office of the accessibility commissioner and is responsible for investigating groups for compliance, auditing companies, receiving violation accusations, collecting penalties for non-compliance and serving notices of violations.

If website owners and businesses fail to comply with ACA regulations, they could face fines of up to $250,000 for each violation.     

Conclusion: If you are looking forward to implementing accessibility testing for your specific project, get connected with a reliable and renowned software testing services company that will provide you with methodical testing strategies that align with your project specific requirements.

Hello! I'm a dedicated senior software test engineer with 6+ years of expertise in automation testing with Selenium, manual testing, and accessibility testing at TestingXperts in Canada. Testing has a bright future, especially with the growing demand for testing to automate a range of tests.