We make websites usable by everyone who visits them, including people using screen readers, keyboards or magnification — and compliant with WCAG 2.1 Level AA for businesses across Canada and the US. New builds, redesigns, and fixes to the site you already have, in English and French.
Built to WCAG 2.1 AA from the first wireframe, tested with a keyboard and a screen reader before launch.
Scroll to explore →WCAG is published by the W3C and sets out testable rules at three levels: A, AA and AAA. Level AA is the one the law points to in Ontario, federally in Canada and in most US cases. In practice it comes down to four things.
None of these changes how your site looks to most visitors. It changes whether the rest can use it at all.
Three laws cover most of our clients. Which one applies depends on where you operate and who you sell to.
The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act requires public-sector organisations and private businesses with 50 or more employees in Ontario to meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA on their public websites. Businesses with 20 or more employees also file a compliance report every three years, and the next one is due December 31, 2026.
The Accessible Canada Act covers the federal government and federally regulated sectors — banking, telecommunications, transportation, broadcasting. If you sell to those organisations, their procurement increasingly asks the same of your site.
US courts regularly treat business websites as covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, and thousands of website accessibility lawsuits are filed each year. A Canadian company selling to US customers online is not exempt from a demand letter.
If you are a small Ontario business with no US customers, the law may not require it of you yet. It is still worth building in: it costs little on a new site, it widens who can buy from you, and the same structure helps you rank on Google and get quoted by AI search.
Five services, one in-house team. Most clients need two or three, depending on whether the site exists yet.
You cannot fix what nobody has measured. Our team runs automated scans across the whole site, then tests the pages that matter by hand — with a keyboard, a screen reader and a contrast checker — because automated tools catch only part of what WCAG asks for. You get a report that ranks each issue by severity and says what fixing it involves.
An audit report sitting in an inbox protects nobody. We fix the issues in the code itself — templates, forms, menus, colours, image descriptions — on WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce and custom builds. PDFs you publish count too, so spec sheets, forms and brochures on your site are included in scope.
Accessibility planned in at the start costs a fraction of fixing it later. On a new build or a redesign, contrast, focus states, heading structure and form labels are decided in design and checked before any code is written. The site is tested with a keyboard and screen reader before launch, in both languages where you need them.
We are an official accessiBe partner. Its accessWidget scans your site daily, adjusts it for screen readers and keyboard users, and gives visitors controls for contrast, text size and motion. It installs in a day, which makes it useful while code fixes are under way. Plans include litigation support if you receive an ADA demand letter.
Most sites that launch accessible do not stay that way. New pages, images without descriptions, a plugin update — scores drift within months of handover. We monitor the site, re-test after changes, and train the people who publish content so they stop introducing new issues.
Starting from scratch or starting from a site you already have? Here is what happens in each case.
Page structure, headings, navigation and form flow are set with accessibility in mind, alongside the content and SEO plan.
Colour contrast, focus states and text sizes are checked in the design itself, before you approve it.
Developed to WCAG 2.1 AA and tested with a keyboard and screen reader on a staging site you can visit.
Final audit before go-live. You get the results and an accessibility statement for the site.
A free automated scan shows the scale of the problem and what kind of site we are dealing with.
Manual testing of your key pages and user journeys, with every issue ranked by severity.
Code-level fixes, PDFs included. The accessiBe widget can go on in the meantime if you need cover now.
Re-tested once fixes are in, then monitored so new content does not undo the work.
Two of our recent projects that passed WCAG 2.1 AA at launch and scored 100 on Lighthouse accessibility.
What we are asked most, answered the way we would on a call.
It depends on four things: how big the site is, what it is built on, how far it is from WCAG 2.1 AA today, and whether you are fixing an existing site or building a new one. Building accessibility into a new site adds very little. Retrofitting an existing one costs more, because work already done has to be reopened.
We start with a free scan, then quote a fixed price for the audit and the fixes once we have seen the site.
In Ontario, yes if you are public sector or a private business with 50 or more employees — the AODA points to WCAG 2.0 Level AA. Federally regulated organisations fall under the Accessible Canada Act (ACA). If you sell to US customers, the ADA can apply regardless of where you are based.
If none of those apply, it is not legally required yet, but it is still the cheaper choice to build it in than to add it later.
It can. ADA website claims turn on whether US customers use your site, not where your company is registered, and Canadian businesses selling online into the US have received demand letters. If the US is a meaningful market for you, treat WCAG 2.1 AA as the working standard.
No, and you should be wary of anyone who says otherwise. A widget improves how your site works with assistive technology and gives visitors useful controls, but some issues — a form built the wrong way, a PDF with no structure — have to be fixed in the code or the file.
We use accessiBe as fast cover while those fixes are made, and as ongoing support afterwards. The ADA litigation support that comes with its plans is worth having if you sell into the US.
Each version adds to the last. 2.0 is what the AODA names; 2.1 adds rules for mobile, low vision and cognitive accessibility; 2.2 adds a few more around focus and forms. We build and audit to 2.1 Level AA, which covers the AODA requirement with room to spare, and can work to 2.2 where a client or contract asks for it.
Usually, yes. Most issues sit in the theme, the forms and the content, and all three can be fixed in place. A rebuild only makes sense when the theme is so far off that fixing it costs close to replacing it — and if that is the case, the audit will say so plainly.
An audit of a typical business site takes 1-2 weeks. Fixes usually take 2-6 weeks depending on the number of templates and documents involved. If you need cover sooner, the accessiBe widget can be live within a day while the work is done.
Yes. Both language versions are held to the same WCAG 2.1 AA standard, with the language correctly set on every page so screen readers pronounce it properly — a detail often missed on bilingual sites. See our multilingual website design work for how we build bilingual sites generally.
Yes, more than most people expect. Descriptive headings, image alt text, clean page structure and fast, readable pages are what screen readers need and also what Google and AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews use to understand a page. Doing one well does most of the work for the other.
Because websites change after launch. New pages, images uploaded without descriptions, embedded videos without captions and plugin updates all introduce issues, and scores can fall within months. A short training session for your editors and scheduled re-testing keeps the site where it started.
Send us your website address and we will run a free accessibility scan, then come back within one business day with what it found and what we would fix first.
WCAG 2.1 AA · AODA, ACA and ADA · English and French