In this episode, we review Canadian accessibility laws, the broad requirements, who they apply to, and any penalties for failing to comply. In addition, we discuss the broader impact of these laws on the internet as a whole, as well as the WordPress ecosystem.
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Mentioned In This Episode
- Coca Cola Spiced
- Accessible Canada Act
- 2011 Standard on Web Accessibility
- Accessible British Columbia Act
- Accessibility for Manitobans Act
- Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act
- Newfoundland & Labrador: Act Respecting Accessibility in the Province
- Nova Scotia Accessibility Act
- WAVE
Transcript
Chris: Welcome to the Accessibility Craft podcast where we explore the art of creating accessible websites while trying out interesting craft beverages. This podcast is brought to you by the team at Equalize Digital, a WordPress accessibility company and the proud creators of the Accessibility Checker plugin. And now onto the show.
Amber: Hey everybody, it’s Amber, and I am here today with Steve.
Steve: Hey everyone, how’s it going?
Amber: And Chris. Hello. And we are going to be talking about Canadian accessibility laws, but first we have a beverage that I really don’t want to drink, and I’m going to argue it’s not a craft beverage. But what are we drinking today, Chris?
Today’s Beverage
Chris: We’re drinking Coca Cola Spiced. It’s it’s a new blend from the beloved soft beverage company that they claim combines a unique alchemy of their iconic cola with raspberry and spiced flavors. So, I have never had spiced Coca Cola before. You’re right, it’s not a craft beverage in the traditional sense.
But I also know you hate Coke. So this is going to be really funny.
Amber: Yeah. So before we try this, I am going to give a quick shout out that if you want to access the show notes or the transcripts, so you can read of my disgust of Coke, you can get those at accessibilitycraft. com slash 0 7 8. And I’m really just delaying here.
I don’t want to open this can because I do really hate Coke. I think that Coca Cola is gross. I don’t understand how Steve literally lives on Coca Cola.
Steve: It’s the only way our business survives. Diet Coke has built this company.
Amber: I on the other half, as I was up quite late, accessibility testing something for a client was eating lots of chocolate. So that’s mine.
Chris: Everyone has their thing.
Steve: Yeah.
Chris: So let’s crack these open. Let’s see if this just tastes like regular Coke or if we can detect the spiced in the Coke.
Amber: You know how sometimes we read the ingredients on these? I don’t think we should read the ingredients on this one.
Chris: We can read it after you have a sip, yeah.
Amber: It’s junky American pop.
Steve: It’s actual liquid death.
Amber: I will do it the right way. Smell it first.
Steve: It’s strong. It’s strong.
Amber: Okay, wait, but the first I smell
Chris: Raspberry. I smell raspberry.
Amber: I do smell raspberry, which normally I can’t remember, but Coke doesn’t smell like that, right?
Steve: Right.
Chris: Yeah. And it’s not even, it’s also, it has like a cough syrupy, like fake raspberry type smell. If it reminds me of the smell, you know what the smell I think of for this it’s like DayQuil. That’s what it smells like to me. It smells like DayQuil.
Amber: I don’t think it smells like DayQuil.
Chris: It smells like DayQuil to me. I don’t know.
Amber: But isn’t DayQuil orange? DayQuil is orange.
Chris: I don’t know. It’s supposed to be orange, but really it’s just, I think the flavor that DayQuil actually is nasty.
Steve: Yeah. It tastes a little bit like it too.
Chris: I’m going to have a sip here.
Amber: All right. You’re going to make me drink this.
I really want to know though, there’s a literal definition of like size or something for a craft brewery. I think we need to figure out what that is. And that is a new rule for Chris.
If they distribute worldwide and I guess that’s nice for our listeners in some random country in Africa or Asia or something, they can probably get this.
Steve: I actually think Amber should have to shotgun this.
Chris: Yeah.
Amber: You know what? I will give it. These are the tiny little WordCamp Europe size sodas. They’re not massive American sodas.
Steve: It disappears in my koozie.
Amber: Have you noticed I still haven’t tasted it yet?
Chris: So I will say it just. To me the overall vibe while Amber takes a drink and hopefully doesn’t spit take into her mic is it just tastes like Coca Cola with some raspberry in it to me.
Like it does, I’m not like I get the Coke is more of an undertone. It’s very raspberry forward. Um, I’m not getting like the dry mouth, like chalky feel I normally get after drinking Coke.
Steve: Yeah, It’s not diet. Yeah.
Chris: Yeah. It’s not diet. It’s definitely sweetened with sugar.
Amber: No, it’s not. It’s high fructose corn for syrup. Let’s be real.
Chris: Yes. High fructose corn syrup.
Amber: This is not Mexican Coke.
Steve: Did you drink it yet?
Amber: Mexican Coke is made with sugar. American Coke. Is made with Iowa corn, which I should love because I grew up there, but I don’t.
Steve: Yeah, it’s now this is going to sound really weird, but I don’t know. We have what’s called Goodwills here. Do you guys have Goodwill in Texas?
Amber: Maybe not everyone does. So you should explain what Goodwill is.
Steve: It’s like a place where you can donate your goods and then they re they resell them cheap. Right. It’s like a. I don’t know, a thrift store or, whatever, but they all smell the same. Like it doesn’t matter which one you go into. I don’t know if it’s a cleaner they use or if that’s just like a general smell of old stuff.
Amber: Yeah, that’s what I think it is. In combination with probably Pine Sol or something.
Steve: Yeah, something like that. So here’s the point I’m making is, This tastes to me like what that smells like.
Chris: I gotta go to Goodwill this afternoon now. There’s one like just up the street from our house.
Steve: They’re like, there’s a strange man in here just sniffing around.
Chris: Yeah, sir, why are you smelling that ottoman?
Amber: So I do not dislike this as strongly as I dislike regular Coke. But I would never choose to drink this, ever.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah.
Amber: That’s where I am.
Steve: So, so the weird thing about
Amber: You, you like Coke. Do you like this better, Steve, than regular Coke?
Steve: No. The kick is I drink Diet Coke, which is like Chris said, dry, right? It’s real dry and and maybe that’s why I, when we have wine, I like it as dry as I can find it, right? I, there’s just something about that dryness in the mouth that I like. But, So anytime I drink a regular Coke, or this is regular Coke with flavor, it’s super sweet to me. So like my first drink, I was like, wow, that’s a lot of sugar. Right.
Chris: Yeah.
Steve: Or high fructose corn syrup.
Amber: I’m going to hide mine in my Accessibility Craft koozie, which it’s actually too small for the can, so you can’t even really see it.
Then I don’t have to look at it. And just set it over here. And I will chase, Steve likes to chase drinks with a Coke. I will chase my Coke with some tea.
Steve: Although it’s a generic diet Coke because, I love diet Coke, but I also like being cheap,
Amber: Oh, it’s not the Coke brand.
Steve: Shout out to Kroger for the big K.
Amber: All right, wait, so I will say though, I know Chris, you were teasing me a little bit that you were getting back at me for suggesting that we should try turkey and gravy soda. This is not worse than that.
Steve: Oh no, this is much better.
Amber: I would, if I was going to choose, I would pick this over that any day.
Chris: Well, good. They cleared that low bar. I think for me, the bar to clear for any like flavored Coke is Coke Zero Cherry. To me, that is the upper bar of a Coke beverage. That is my hands down personal favorite. This definitely does not clear that bar for me. I probably would not get it again.
But it was an interesting experience. I’ll put it that way.
Amber: I don’t get spiced though. Why do they call it spiced? Because it didn’t take spiced or I didn’t notice like cardamom or cinnamon or cloves or anything. I just noticed Coke and raspberry. So why don’t they just call it Coke raspberry?
Chris: Spiced is shorter than raspberry.
Amber: No, I don’t know. Well,
Chris: You know that, that got put in front of 50 focus groups. So probably Spiced one out after, nine different options, right?
Amber: It sounds fancy.
Steve: Why does the P in Spiced have a, can you see that?
Chris: Oh yeah. It’s got a little thing.
Steve: It’s got a little cut in it.
Amber: Oh, it’s funny. WP Product Talk, the other podcast that I co host We just redid our logo we, I gave opinions. Matt Cromwell did all the hard work. And it has little cuts in the letters too. And I had never seen that font before. So maybe we’ve got the same font that Coca Cola used on there.
Spiced name. So, yeah, if you are a Coke fan, maybe this is worth trying, but I don’t know if it stands out as like a phenomenal soda that everyone needs to taste in their life.
Chris: No, it’s no Coke Zero Cherry.
Introducing Today’s Topic
Amber: All right. Well, talking about other things that start with C. It’s like Sesame Street. This episode is brought to you by the letter C.
We’re going to talk about Canadian accessibility laws today. We talk a ton about American or United States accessibility laws, and we’ve talked recently about European accessibility laws, specifically the European Accessibility Act, but we haven’t talked about all of the Canadian laws.
And so I thought it would be interesting for us to do a run through of some of the different laws that impact website accessibility in Canada and chat about them. So are you guys down with that?
Steve: Let’s do it. I’m down.
Amber: It’s good. Cause if you said no, I’d be like, well, my show notes are done. So I don’t know what we would do.
Steve: It’s a short episode.
Accessible Canada Act
Amber: Question I probably should not have asked. Yeah. So, So I’ll kick us off. I’m going to start with the Accessible Canada Act. For people who are not familiar with this is a federal law in Canada. So it applies across the entire nation of Canada, but it only impacts federal government organizations and any federally regulated businesses and non profits that have more than 10 employees, federally regulated is things like banks or like The trains, those might be a public business like transportation, but it goes across borders or it has to do with money.
So it’s federally regulated. This mostly doesn’t apply to many businesses. But what this law does apply, if it applies to you or your clients, is it requires you to first consult with people with disabilities. Two, you have to publish an accessibility plan that says how your organization is going to handle accessibility.
This has to be publicly published. Then you have to set up ways to receive feedback about accessibility and publish regular progress reports about accessibility and how the business or the government entity is handling it. All of the deadlines for this is passed. It’s not a new law. So if you haven’t heard of it and you’re building websites for government, In Canada, you should definitely go check it out.
The most recent deadline was in June, on June 1st of this year, June 1st, 2024. And that was when federally regulated private businesses that had between 10 and 99 employees had to have accessible websites. This has a fine as a penalty of up to $250,000 Canadian. So that is the Accessible Canada Act. And there is another federal law.
Steve: Can I ask a question about this one before we move on?
Amber: Yeah, we can ask questions.
Steve: So it says no conformance standard or website measured.
Amber: Oh yeah, I didn’t say that.
Steve: There’s no standard that you have?
Amber: This law doesn’t specifically say like other, some other laws will say something like you have to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 or 2.1 AA. This does not define a standard. It’s like everyone’s complaint about the Americans with Disabilities Act. It has to be accessible, but they don’t tell you how to measure it.
Steve, do you want to share our second federal law?
2011 Standard on Web Accessibility
Steve: Yeah. So this is the 2011 standard on web accessibility applies to government of Canada websites and web applications. It requires web content accessibility guidelines, or as we like to say WCAG 2.0 AA current. So currently under review with the notice of recommending the following, the har Now am I saying this right?
The harmonized European standard that it’s, Amber has it listed here as EN 3 0 1 5 4 9 and WIC AG 2.1 AA. So does that mean that they’re currently considering making that those the standards?
Amber: Yeah. So the standard references. 2. 0 cause it’s so much older.
Steve: Right. Right.
Amber: But there’s a big notice.
If you go to the top of the standards website that says this standard is under review in the meantime, we recommend that you follow the European standard instead, which requires WCAG 2. 1. Yeah. So I think better safe than sorry.
Steve: Yeah, move on.
Amber: Follow 2.1, not 2.0.
Steve: So the key deadlines for this was October 1st, 2011, so this has been in effect for quite some time. The penalties any measure allowed by the Financial Administration Act that the Treasury Board would determine as appropriate and acceptable in the circumstances, including freezing funds or reorganization. So that sounds pretty darn serious, right?
Amber: Yeah, if you can’t get your funds that could cause a lot of problems.
Steve: Yeah. Or to have your company reorganized.
Amber: Yeah. Well, it’s only for federal. Government of Canada. So it’d be like, I don’t know, the tax branch in some city or something, but yeah, they could kick out whoever’s running in, in charge of things.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So that’s the 2011 standard.
Accessible British Columbia Act
Chris: I think I’m up next on the provincial side of things.
So we’re going to be, I’m going to talk about the Accessible British Columbia Act. So this is obviously going to apply to British Columbia specifically. And within that, it, What the law says it applies to is provincial government web content. So any web content put out by the British Columbia provincial government.
It requires development of an accessibility standard and accessibility plan, and the accessibility plan must be updated every three years. Now, what I’m not sure about from my reading of this is whether that accessibility standard and plan is implemented by every government agency, or if that is directing the provincial government to direct and update an accessibility plan for the entire province for every three years.
But either way that’s what this says. And it’s resulted in the accessible BC plan and British Columbia’s web policy and content standards for provincial government plans. Websites. So, okay. So it’s it’s resulted in statewide or province wide plans and a
Amber: Don’t use the S word. No states in Canada.
Chris: Yes. Yes. And these are all targeting 2. 2 AA of WCAG and they’re targeting AAA for reading level. So they have to have Amber, remind me sorry for not knowing this. What is that reading level target for AAA? What did they have to, is it below sixth grade?
Amber: Well, so, so yeah, success criterion 3. 1. 5 reading level is the one AAA that they are requiring.
This is the one that we actually have an extra setting for in our Accessibility Checker plugin. Basically you have to have, it says. We, it’s below secondary level, so ninth grade or below. And if you, and if your content is above that, then you have to provide a simplified version. That is below that. And that’s our simplified summary in Accessibility Checker could help you meet this requirement for the Accessible British Columbia Act.
Chris: Got it. And it seems like at least right now we are in, we are entering, we are like exactly, is that, is my math right here? No we’re we’re like two thirds of the way through their three year cycle. With these plans. So in, at the end of 2025 is their first cycle and their current priorities are updating government websites to make them more accessible within these standards, and then a new plan will be released and a new cycle will start is my understanding and no penalties interestingly for this, so everybody’s currently,
Steve: right.
Chris: Yeah, currently.
Amber: Yeah, it’s still pretty new. The fact that they even referenced WCAG 2. 2, right?
Chris: Yeah.
Amber: Well, cause They wrote the law to say the current WCAG version, as opposed to literally saying a number. So every time there’s a new version, instantly that’s the requirement of the law, I don’t know. Maybe we can talk about later whether we think that’s a good idea or not. But luckily you have lots of warning before there’s a new version of WCAG, like many years.
Accessibility for Manitobans Act
Amber: So, so the next one, this is a huge one, the Accessibility for Manitobans Act and the way a lot of these work is they create an act which is a law that then says, Okay, now the provincial government has the right to create standards or rules.
We see the same thing here in the U. S. with the Americans with Disabilities Act, where now they created a new rule that says you have to use WCAG for Local Government Websites. So, so the Accessibility for Manitobans Act, the rule that came from that is the Accessible Information and Communication Standard Regulation.
Very fancy. What, yeah, what is interesting about this one is it applies to government websites. It also applies to business and non profit websites. If that business or non profit has one or more employee and we’ll circle back on this in just a little bit as a discussion point. It does require WCAG 2.
1 level AA for any new websites or new website content. So if you create something new, if you update your website, if you publish a new page on your website and any older content or websites also have to be updated to WCAG 2.1 AA if they are required in order to access information related to the organization’s good or services.
So it’s not enough to be like, well, I’m just not going to update my website. If your website describes your products or describes your company or says how to contact you, You have to update your website. It also requires that businesses provide timely and ongoing accessible communication training to their, any employees that have applicable duties.
And they do include people who manage websites in this training. So on a regular basis, there are specific requirements in the standard as to what the content of the training has to be. So if you are in Manitoba You should look at this. And it would apply to agencies because if you are an agency building websites for someone else, you need to make sure that your team has this training on and includes the right content in the training.
And then as an additional requirement, any organizations, private organizations that have 50 or more employees also have to have a publicly available documentation for all of their policies, measures, and practices related to Accessible Information and Communication, including sharing the content and the time frame of the training that they provide to their employees publicly.
So again, these will be listed on your website somewhere. And then the deadlines for this, the Manitoba government had to meet WCAG 2. 1 AA by May 1st, 2023. Public sector organizations, so non profit, or government funded separate entities like libraries or schools. Their deadline was May 1st of 2024, so that is just recently passed.
And then the big deadline that is coming up is that all private sector non profit organizations and small municipalities and private businesses need to have WCAG 2.1 AA compliant websites by May 1st of 2025. So this is even sooner than the European Accessibility Act we’ve been talking about in June. This is coming up even before that for everyone in Manitoba.
They do have some exceptions to this law. If it’s not technically feasible for the content or application to meet the required level, I don’t know about technically feasible. It’s probably always technically feasible in the WordPress environment. So you probably won’t get that pass. If the technology required to publish the content is not readily available, obviously again that doesn’t apply to websites.
Meeting the required level will demonstrate will result in demonstrable, undue hardship for the organization. And I’m going to circle back to this in just a little bit. And whether, if the organization doesn’t have direct control over the content or application or it relates to product labels or product information.
So for example, our soda pops have very specific labeling requirements that have to be on there. Well, maybe you can’t change that format because it has to follow that standard. There are sanctions listed you can get fines or orders to comply, but the amount of the fine hasn’t been published publicly anywhere that I can see.
That’s the Accessibility for Manitobans Act, which I definitely want us to circle back on in a few minutes, but a very similar law at the provincial level is in Ontario. Do you want to talk about that one, Chris?
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act
Chris: Yeah so this is the AODA, or Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. This one is one that we’ve been talking about with people online a little while now.
This law’s been out and in the wild. It its original deadline was January 1st, 2021. All websites need to comply with WCAG. Standards specifically 2. 0 level AA with a couple of exceptions, which I’ll go into. So this applies to government businesses and nonprofits with 50 or more employees.
So that’s quite the threshold. That’s going to exclude a lot of organizations and businesses, I would imagine But as I mentioned, it’s targeting WCAG 2. 0 Level AA. The exceptions are live captions and audio descriptions for pre recorded audio are not required. I’m not sure who lobbied to get that through, but those are the exceptions.
And then It requires training for employees or volunteers on web standards. So this is similar in some respects to the the act that Amber was just talking about. Maybe there was some inspiration drawn there from what the AODA did when they drafted that newer law. And then businesses and nonprofits with more than 20 employees and public sector organizations were required to file an accessibility compliance report.
By December 31st, 2023 and every three years afterwards. So even if you’re, even if you’re below, even if you’re below that 50 employee threshold, if you have 20 or more employees, you still have to report is my understanding on this. So there are some exceptions, so you can file for an undue hardship because the business could not afford to comply.
I. Believe that there are some thresholds and standards, and there’s probably a lot of burden of proof there that you can actually not afford to do it that you have to submit. It’s not just saying, oh, I can’t afford it. It’s, there’s probably some, something some hurdles to clear there.
And then you can also Apply for undue hardship because compliance would harm the health or safety of people with disabilities. I struggle with that one a little.
Amber: I’m not sure how that would apply to websites. It probably applies to built environment accessibility or something. I don’t know.
Chris: Yeah. And this one does actually carry some teeth. So there are fines of up to $50,000 for each and every day or partial day that an offense happens. And for a corporation up to a hundred thousand dollars for each and every day or partial day that an offense happens. So failure to follow these reports, if you have more than 20 employees and if you have more than 50 employees, also failure to meet the standard to begin with is going to land you in some pretty significant financial hot water.
So that is the AODA, or Accessibility with Ontarians with Disabilities Act.
Steve: Right. But wait, there’s more.
Chris: Oh, there’s more.
Additional Provincial Laws in the Works
Steve: So there’s a couple, there’s a couple other policies or laws that are in the works. Right? So the first one we have here is the Newfoundland and Labrador Act Respecting Accessibility in the Province.
This is an accessibility communications policy. It’s not published who it applies to right now, because this is in the works and it hasn’t been published yet. So we don’t know who exactly it’s going to apply to. But it requires preventing and identifying and removing barriers to information and communications.
Allows for the creation of an accessible standard. The deadline is December 31st of this year, 2024. Communications and Public Engagement will form an oversight committee to ensure consistent application of the accessibility communications policy for province government websites. That’s a lot of words, big words.
So,
Amber: We might not pass reading level check on this transcript.
Steve: Yeah, totally. So, the, there’s no penalties listed as this is something that is currently seems to be in draft mode, but is coming at the end of the year. And then finally, we have the Nova Scotia Accessibility Act. And this applies to government, businesses, and nonprofits requires standards and requirements being set by 2025.
And the deadline 2030 original goal is for accessibility in the province. So I’m guessing the 2030 is when they would want Everybody to be in compliance. Is that what I’m reading?
Amber: That’s what I think when I read that one.
Steve: Yeah. And then finally, no penalties are currently listed for this as it’s also in draft mode and coming soon.
Amber: Yeah, so those are all the laws, but we are going to talk about what they mean and some other things about them. But first, we’re going to take a commercial break and we’ll be right back.
This Podcast is Brought to You by Accessibility Checker
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Cheers to Including People with Disabilities
Amber: So, we’re back, and I want to highlight something that I thought was really unique about those. Maybe we can, I don’t really want to cheers with my soda, but, I will give a toast to Canada on a lot of these laws require website owners to include people with disabilities in the process.
And I don’t see that in as many of the other laws, and I think that’s really cool.
Chris, you’ll drink to that.
Steve: It’s not spicy though, this is not a spicy episode even though it’s spiced. No. This is a spiced episode.
Chris: It’s spiced with a little, that’s a little sweet, it’s a little sweet.
Steve: I think it’s super important to include them in the process. We can try as much as we like to emulate what it’s like to have some sort of disability. But it’s never a, it’s never as real as somebody that actually lives it day to day. Right?
Amber: Yeah, for sure. So, and that’s why we do a lot of user testing.
Chris: Yeah. There’s a level of nuance there that even someone who’s WAS certified is not going to have when you’re just in there using the tools. And that’s not just how you test a website. It’s how you live a day to day. Right. And Yeah, and I think having people with varying degrees of experience in the tools is particularly important too.
Employee Count Thresholds: 1, 10, 50+
Amber: So, another thing I noted about these laws is that there are a lot of different thresholds of where, when it applies to a for profit business.
So Accessible Canada Act, which was the first one out there, said ten or more employees The AODA that you told us about, Chris, said 50 or more employees. The Manitobans Act said one employee. What do we think about these different thresholds?
Steve: It’s a weird, it’s a weird way to measure, if somebody should be accessible to to some degree I understand that if you’re talking
Chris: I was going to say the exact same thing.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. If you’re talking money does the company have enough funds to actually, achieve a certain level of accessibility? The number of employees may be
Amber: I think that is an indicator of revenue to some degree, right?
Steve: Yeah.
Amber: If you can afford to pay salaries for some number of people that says something about how much money you might have.
Steve: But I think the impact of their digital presence may be, more adequate, but like I could see that being a lot more of a, there would have to be more bureaucracy to evaluate that, right? That’s
an interesting point, like a drop shipper or like somebody who makes money off affiliate revenue.
Chris: Or I was going to say a five person SaaS company where it’s all founders, right? And, but they’re pulling in tens of millions of dollars in revenue. And they just don’t need more people because everything’s automated and scalable for whatever they’re doing. Right? Right. There’s, I don’t know that it’s the best indicator.
It’s an indicator. Yeah. And it’s maybe one that, that is easy for the government to track. Maybe that’s one of the reasons they use it.
Amber: So the European Accessibility Act has the 10 employees or 2 million euros in annual turnover. Yeah. Like maybe that’s a better idea to have a revenue thing or an employee count.
Yeah, so I hope everyone in the Canadian government is listening to this episode. We’re giving you some really great suggestions right now.
I just think it’s interesting that there was already a precedent of 10 at the federal level and then we have two provinces that instead of saying, let’s just match what they’re doing federally, one went way low, which I think is actually from a like ethical standpoint, they’re basically saying. All businesses, right? They’re giving a pass to freelancers, or solopreneurs. And then the other one went much higher with the 50. If you had to pick a number, what would you pick?
Steve: Well, it gets all kinds of, I’m not a hundred percent. We didn’t put a disclaimer that we’re not lawyers, but –
Amber: Oh yeah, we probably should have said that. Talking about laws as web developers.
Steve: Yeah. What, like the, I’m sure federal supersedes local, right. But starts to get weird there. Right. Because here in the United States, right? Marijuana is probably the best example I could come, pull out of my, pull out of my hat, right?
There’s several states in the union that now allow for recreational use of marijuana, right? But it’s still illegal at the federal level. Like in that state, like from the, if a fed came in, they could, shut you down.
Amber: But the state is like, Nope, sorry. We make our own rules.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. And I understand that the United States has different state rights than, Canada and their provinces, but like it gets, it adds so much more like. I don’t know, confusion in gray area,
Chris: yeah. If I put myself in the shoes of a business owner, who’s trying to navigate, not only complying with this, but with tax compliance and HR law compliance and all the other things, it is completely overwhelming to be frank, if you’re a team of one or even five and to introduce just inconsistency and complexity where it doesn’t need to exist is something that I really wish wasn’t the case.
I would love to have, what I do appreciate, let’s say, let’s do the compliment sandwich or whatever it is, right? Or maybe a reverse compliment sandwich, criticism, compliment criticism. But I think that. Having a lot of more of these laws referencing WCAG is productive. I appreciate that we’re seeing more of that.
What I think would also be nice is giving people a consistent threshold where they know they have to meet it or don’t would be a good step. And then obviously, To some extent resources would be good for particularly businesses on the smaller side. Like, why are we just letting people opt out of this for a grievance?
Why isn’t that just giving you access to additional resources or assistance that maybe people who don’t file for a grievance don’t get maybe there’s, maybe there are volunteers or people that could help provide training or information kind of like we do here with the SBA, right? There’s gotta be smarter ways to handle some of this.
Amber: Yeah, well, I did notice that the Accessibility for Ontarians Act.
If you go on the government website for that, you can request them to test your website.
Chris: Oh, well that’s good.
Amber: I think they might charge. Oh. But perhaps it is less expensive than hiring a, an independent, for profit tester versus tax funder, maybe supplemented tester. I don’t know.
But yeah, I think that would be interesting to see if there could be more resources provided to especially small businesses.
Advice for Micro Businesses
Amber: If you guys were advising a micro business owner about making their website compliant with these laws what would you advise them to do? And I think there’s a couple of ways to approach this question.
If. Whether they’re DIYing or working with someone. So maybe we start with the DIY first. These, in Manitoba, I have one employee and now WCAG applies to me. What would you tell me to do? Steve, you go first.
Steve: Steve goes first.
Amber: I’m coming to you. I have a flower shop.
Steve: Oh man it’s hard to, cause I’m definitely not the one to consult on complying with laws, but but the flip side of that is I’m definitely one to consult with on making things accessible. Right. So I would err on if there is a requirement in the law that I can point to.
And for me, if it’s WCAG. Yes, I can look that up. I can go, okay. Here’s, I could provide you with the spec and I, you know, if you’re just a flower shop owner, this is going to be very difficult, right? Like this, like you’re not a web developer and, you just, maybe you went to wordpress.
com, bought a thing, installed a theme put some information in, right? Like you didn’t do any developer stuff, right? This is going to be
Amber: Do you think WordPress is a best solution for these people? Flower shop owner who can’t afford to hire a developer.
Steve: Opposed to Wix or Squarespace.
Amber: Yeah, I don’t know, Shopify or something. I don’t know, for my flower shop.
Steve: I would imagine that, Wix and Squarespace, their accessibility varies from theme to theme, just like it does in WordPress. I would probably say that you have more of a, an ability to remediate the accessibility issues in WordPress than you would in those other platforms because they’re proprietary and they’re locked in.
You don’t get the ability to modify the code of your Wix theme, right? It’s just not gonna happen. You can submit a support ticket and wait forever, right?
Amber: Yeah. Or you might be able to do some minimal,
Steve: yeah.
Amber: CSS or something like that, but you might not be able to necessarily do more complex stuff.
Steve: Yeah. So that, so the answer. To the question is probably you’re a flower shop owner. You’re not a web developer. You need to consult and hire and bring in a web developer. Now that does create the burden, which, which, the financial burden, which we’ve spoken about as well.
Amber: So, yeah, I actually saw the
Accessibility for Manitobans Act has a really great FAQ document about this. And there’s a question in it that says, I don’t have the skills to update my website and or web applications to WCAG 2. 1 Level AA. Does my organization still need to comply with the standard? And their answer is, yes. If your organization does not have the in house expertise to make updates, you are required to find outside sources to ensure you comply with this legal requirement.
For Yeah. So I think they’re pretty much if you can’t do it yourself, you need to hire someone. And so maybe that’s the recommendation for these micro businesses is you probably should not DIY if you don’t understand it. You need to budget in your business budget to hire someone who does and can guide you to ensure you’re complying with the law.
Chris: I would advocate for a hybrid of that in a business that’s strapped for resources. What I would say. Is if someone were asking me what to do is to find a consultant who can get you hooked into the right tools, who understands what actually will output accessible code reliably.
So for instance, if someone came to you, Amber or you, Steve, and said, Hey, I don’t have the budget for a custom website, but I need to be able to put something together that looks reasonable. And that is going to be reliably accessible. As long as I put the content in correctly. I. Can virtually guarantee you would be able to recommend that person, a, an off the shelf theme and a set of tools to achieve most normal outcomes that a business would want on their website.
So I think paying for some light consulting to get the toolkit together. And then maybe if you’re a reasonably technically apt person, you would be able to execute after you have the right tools. What I wouldn’t do is just go Google accessible WordPress tools and pick the first five things because as we’ve established with the accessibility ready tag and other things, those are good indicators and green flags, but they’re not an end all be all indicator.
And you probably should at least have a conversation with a professional. And whether it’s us or somebody else, like I know people who will like Gen Herres at Anphira, shout out to her, is a great example of someone who can put together a reasonably accessible site quickly, right.
Without an intense need for resources. Because she’s dialed into, you have these five choices for each of these five things. And that’s, those are all the choices you get, right? It’s like a narrower set of choices. You’re, you don’t, it’s not sky’s the limit possibilities, right? You’re going to have to make some compromises.
I think it’s the other qualifier or asterisk I would put on that if someone was asking me. It’s like you, you’re going to have limitations when you’re.
Amber: Don’t put a carousel on the top of your homepage.
Chris: That too.
Amber: Right. There are definitely things you can do that will simplify your website and make it less likely to have accessibility problems, for sure.
But I think you have to budget for this. Yes. Listen we did some entity changes with our business. We hired a lawyer. We did not go Google contracts, download them off the internet. I guess you can, and there are probably people who start businesses doing that. But at some point, I think you have to realize that There are things where it’s worth investing in a professional to make sure your business is complying with the laws.
We have an accountant help us with our business tax filings every year for a reason. And this, it sounds is moving in that same direction.
Questions to Ask When Hiring a Developer
Amber: If you are going to hire someone, what are some questions that you should ask them to make sure they know what they’re talking about?
Chris: So, the number one for me, because I hear this all the time from people who come to us asking for, quotes for, Whether it’s an audit or remediation or whatever it is, or they’re curious about the plugin is they say they talked to five agencies before they talked to us and all five of them in one way or another recommended an overlay.
I would say that’s the number one indicator that someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about. And it’s just been bought and has been bought and paid for by an affiliate program for these companies that are now the subject of class action lawsuits because their tools don’t do what they say they’re going to do.
Future episode. I think the next episode, we’re going to talk more about that. But that’s the number one thing I would look for. If they recommend an overlay, they’re immediately out, or at least they should be.
Amber: Okay. So that’s the red flag. But the question is the question, what is your opinion on overlays?
Or is the question more broad and not leading? What is your approach to accessibility compliance?
Chris: That one.
Steve: Okay. Yeah. And be cautious of developers trying to sell accessibility as a line item. Right? Like we don’t do that. Like in our company, accessibility is baked into every aspect of web development.
That we do, right? It’s not we’re not just throwing a laundry list. You get A, B, and C and it’ll be, fully compliant.
Amber: And then you can check this box to get the accessibility.
Steve: Yeah. So
Amber: yeah.
Chris: So that would be the other question is is accessibility an option on your projects or do you always do it, right?
Or something to that effect. So if they treat it like an option, that means that they’re less accustomed to actually baking that into their process, which means they’re more likely to make mistakes. So I think that’s a good one.
Amber: I think another thing would be to ask them for a recent example of a website they built that they believe complies with the laws, or at least and that would give them the opportunity if they want to be like, I built this and the header and the footer and all that stuff is compliant, but the content was added by the client or whatever, you can let them give whatever thing they want, but I would take the URL and I would run it through a tool called WAVE.
And we’ll put a link to that in the show notes. If you’ve never heard of it, you can then go test their work with WAVE and you don’t have to be an owner of the website to be able to get a report, a WAVE report on a website. And I think that is a good indicator too. Obviously if there’s images missing all text, maybe the client broke that after the developer
launched it. That’s why I’m saying give them the ability to say what they might be aware of on the page already,
Chris: and give them a little grace to understanding that if the website has exited their control, it might be that someone else came in and introduced those problems.
Amber: But I think if we got asked that question, we literally would be.
And I’ve done this before. I’ve said, I’m going to show you this page because this one section is really good and we built this. By the way, the form above that was not there when we launched the website and we didn’t put it in. And I just say that and then they’re like, okay, I understand. Then they go look at the part I wanted them to look at and they ignore that.
And then I also mentioned the website owner, and I’m like, Hey, I noticed you added this form that has no labels.
Chris: Yeah.
Amber: Are you paying attention to Accessibility Checker? Yeah,
Chris: Accessibility Checker would have flagged that for you.
Will these laws stop micro-businesses from having websites?
Amber: So, do you think these laws will dissuade micro-businesses from having websites at all?
Because this is a thing that I have heard, is there are some very small businesses That say, I don’t need a website, I have Facebook, or I use Instagram, or, or they’re on Etsy. So, what do you think?
Steve: That’s an interesting thought. If you run your whole business through Facebook, doesn’t, does that not count?
Amber: So all of these laws cover communication. So the things, so I think this is where, in the Manitobans Act, it’s spent, it’s, it had an exception for things that you couldn’t control. So that doesn’t apply to websites, but what that does apply to is your Facebook page and how the buttons on your Facebook page are coded are not your control.
However, what is in your control on your Facebook page is did you go to the effort of adding the alt text on the image? Or when you upload videos to YouTube, are you also uploading captions for those videos? So it does apply to social media and other content, but it would get you around the more technical aspects
of, some of the harder parts of accessibility compliance to just not have a website and only use social media.
Chris: It’s outside the purview of this, but I do feel like there’s a deeper business strategy question there of, do you really want to hitch your wagon to one of these big platforms that’s completely outside of your control and have them be responsible for your future?
I think there was something with Metta recently where they basically destroyed thousands of businesses because of some changes to the Facebook groups algorithm, or like they shut down integrations for that. Or maybe it was Reddit. I don’t know that there’s always some sort of calamity, but that’s something to think about.
Steve: Yeah.
Amber: Well, our businesses that don’t have websites, but they have Google My Business profiles and they just were relying on like the map. Pin and showing up at the top of the results and getting reviews or whatever. And then I’ve heard where Google takes their Google My Business down for a violation of terms of service that no one understands.
And they lose all their reviews and now they’re not getting any phone calls anymore.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. There’s definitely a good case for owning your content and not relying on them. Facebook or Google to basically run your whole business.
Amber: but I, I do think, oh, go ahead.
Steve: From an accessibility standpoint, I think that may be an exception that people won’t have websites because of this.
I think the sad reality is most people are unaware of these laws altogether and they’re going to make a website. And then the only time it may come up, if there’s a rumbling that somebody got sued or fined. Right. And that may scare some people, but
Amber: Or if they, yeah, they talk to a specialist, right?
I think we’ve heard weird laws from our accountant and we’re like, we didn’t know that applied to us. We’ve never heard of that before. Okay. Thank you for telling us, right? If you don’t specialize in something, it’s, there’s no way you can really watch every law, unless maybe you join a business association or something.
That’s why those are useful because they can advise you about things that impact your industry.
Which probably means all of us, and everyone listening here, who know about website accessibility should probably be doing more outreach to the restaurant association, or the local chamber of commerce, or the beauty parlor association, or whatever it is, right? To tell them, because we’re the ones who actually know.
Undue Hardship Exceptions
Amber: Do you guys want to talk a little bit more about that quote, undue hardship exception, which I know you spoke a little bit about in, when you were talking about the AODA, Chris. In that same FAQ guide for the Accessibility for Manitobans Act, there was a question that says my organization can’t afford to provide a requested communication support or accessible format.
Does that count as undue hardship? So basically it’s too expensive for my organization to make my website accessible or make this specific PDF accessible or whatever that is. Is this an undue hardship? And I’m going to read this. This is the exact wording from the lawmakers or the rule makers from the government that says, Reasonable accommodation requires your organization to take responsibility for an accommodation such as a communication support or accessible format, including bearing the costs up to the point of demonstratable undue hardship.
Undue hardship may be met when there are extreme costs or significant health and safety risks to provide an accommodation. Inconvenience, preferences, or some costs do not usually qualify as undue hardship. Although undue hardship is not defined in the Accessibility for Manitobans Act or the Manitoba Human Rights Code, case law tells us that it is more than minimal hardship and it must be based on actual evidence of hardship.
So how
Chris: It’s a pretty high burden of proof then. It’s probably I would have to shut my business down if I incurred these costs and there’s no way to account for this in a budget. Right? That’s what I would call an extreme cost.
Amber: Yeah. How I read this is you might have to say, here’s my P& L.
Here’s a copy of my bank statements for my business showing all the cash I have on hand. And here’s, five or some number of quotes from accessibility professionals. That all show there’s no way I can afford to do this.
Steve: So, which could happen if it was a huge blog or something with thousands and thousands of pages, like
5,000 word blog posts, Recipe blog, right? Like with just tons of images. And
Chris: One question that I, that just popped in my head that I know wasn’t on our list is, do we think as a result of some of these laws, we’re going to see the internet actually shrink a little?
Do you think people are going to, rather than try to remediate a bunch of this old content, are they just going to start wholesale, like getting rid of it if it can’t meet the standards?
Steve: Well, I think the search engines have already started to black hole inaccessible, right? Lighthouse is a consideration in search results, right?
Amber: Well, or just other content that it thinks are spamming.
Chris: Google’s measuring it. I know that much. Yeah.
Amber: So this is the acronym that I love, which is ROT, R O T, Redundant, Outdated and Trivial Content. And. This is something that I think both SEO and accessibility professionals advise, which is that if you have junk content that doesn’t actually relate to your audience in an appropriate, even if it’s bringing you a lot of traffic, we had a customer that had really old content.
They were a B2B SaaS and they had content about Like pregnancy. And the marketing director was like, I don’t know why all this is in our blog. It brings tons of traffic, but it’s not converting. It doesn’t go anywhere. It like makes no sense. So when we did the re-build, we just deleted it all because it’s like, it’s not relevant to the product at all.
Or if you have content that no one goes to, like. Why do we need all of our past events in the event calendar from eight years ago on our website? Probably not. Nobody cares that there was a meeting at 7pm on a Monday on this topic eight years ago. So removing that, I think, is a good way to start actually trim down your website to what really matters and then there’s less that you hit the delete button.
And so maybe it will result in a smaller internet over time because people are going to start to realize it’s not always about more. And that’s why I was saying I think SEO people will say that sometimes it’s not always about more content. It’s about better quality content. And sometimes having one long article is better than five 250 word articles.
Chris: Yeah. Where you get half a thought out and then you’re, you sign off, like you’ve achieved something.
Amber: You’ve read my blog posts. You know how I feel about short blog posts. Impossible. Can’t write them. But yeah. I don’t know.
Opportunities for Agencies & WordPress Plugins
Amber: Do you think there are opportunities for agencies or WordPress product owners to better support their Canadian customers than having accessible websites?
Steve: Yeah, I think so. I think Chris already touched on it a little bit about the kind of WordPress stack that we offer to our our clients. The, I think that people in our space in the WordPress space have a responsibility to educate themselves on accessibility. I think we, we are a long past the days of disregarding it.
And and we’re seeing, I’m actually, we’re actually seeing some turnaround. People are paying attention. I think these laws are doing it, unfortunately, right? Like the, it’s unfortunately we’ve failed to do the right thing as a collective of developers and people that build the internet and the governments are going to step in and make us do it the right way now.
And I, maybe if we spent a little bit more time educating ourselves on what accessibility is and who it benefits and it benefits everybody, by the way, but it, in
it wouldn’t be in this place. So, so I think you can go all the way back to product creators. Like you have a responsibility to create WordPress products that are accessible because a lot of your products create this content, right?
And So, so if you’re making a product that creates content, let’s make that content accessible. Let’s not make this a bigger, let’s not generate inaccessibility. Right. And then, from the agency level, right? Educating yourself on this. I’ve seen a lot of people doing it now, but and then having those tools at the ready to offer to our clients, the ones that we have, the ones that we have validated that are the most accessible.
Chris: Yeah. And I think where any agency can start, and this is a salient point based on some conversations that have been thrown around on Twitter or X even today, is to look at, take a closer look at the products that you use and that you license on your websites, see what they say about accessibility in their sales materials, and even in their terms of service.
And if you don’t like what consider a different product, or if you really like the product, but you don’t like how they’re approaching accessibility, Say something to them. Maybe if enough agencies are out there saying, Hey, you need to change your approach here. The product owners that are maybe resisting accessibility a bit more than they should, will listen and will adapt to this change in the market. That’s being driven by these laws.
Steve: I think access, accessibility, ignorance is one thing, right? But I think blatant disregard and taking a stance against it is a whole nother can of worms. So you do need to, like Chris said, investigate the products that you’re buying. We talked about if you’re interviewing a developer to make you a website. What questions are you going to ask them? Right. But you need to do the same thing when it comes to the products that you choose to integrate into your websites.
Amber: Yeah. Yeah. I’m hoping that more website owners and agencies and developers are going to start asking WordPress product companies for accessibility conformance reports and VPATs.
And start asking for those questions and saying, unless you can tell me that this is accessible, I’m going to take my business somewhere else. And I think from an opportunity standpoint. There are some WordPress companies, we don’t need to name any of them here, but that are clearly putting effort into accessibility and doing a great job and trying to get better, even if they’re not perfect now, no one is, it’s a journey, right?
And improving their products. And for those companies, and if you’re, thinking about this for your own product, this is a way that you could potentially stand out in the marketplace, because you, if you become. If you have more accessible output, then you can become a trusted product for all the companies in these parts of Canada, or in Europe, or wherever.
And that could be a marketing point for you as well as a way that you can do wonderful things for the world.
Steve: Totally.
Amber: Well, I think it’s been fun diving into all of the different laws. I do want to note you, some people, this came up at WordCamp Canada. Someone said, but you didn’t mention Quebec for Americans, but Quebec for the French speakers.
And the reason why is there’s no, well, there’s no laws that apply to businesses at all. There’s no English laws. I did find out, I spoke to someone, there is a law, which is only published in French, which is why it didn’t come up in all of my searching. I wasn’t, searching for French, but I have a link to it now, which I’ll have to link over in the show notes, but it only applies to universities and government.
It’s nothing in Quebec there. And if there’s another province or territory we didn’t mention, it’s because they don’t have any laws yet. They haven’t done anything. So, yeah. So if you’re located in that area, it might, and you’re interested in this, it might be worth trying to get involved to tell your government, Hey, we want to have more of this going, but I do feel like Canada is a leader
in legislation to support people with disabilities and different things. And I think that’s neat to see, cause there are our nearby neighbor that I didn’t know quite as much about until I went to WordCamp Canada. And it’s good to see that there are some areas there that are doing more to support people with disabilities on the web.
Chris: All right, so Amber, drink again.
Steve: Gotta chug, right?
Amber: I’m done. I took my two or three obligatory sips and I’m going to walk in there after this and hand the can to Chris and be like, enjoy your Coke.
Chris: Well, next time we’re trying a craft beer and I appreciate you letting me have some fun at your expense.
Amber: Yes, I need a nice craft beer and I’m super excited about our next one. And we are going, we will save what that is for next time, but we are going to be talking about an accessibility overlay and a fun edgy topic. So make sure you tune in two weeks and we’ll see you then.
All right. Bye.
Steve: See you guys.
Chris: Thanks for listening to Accessibility Craft. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe in your podcast app to get notified when future episodes release. You can find Accessibility Craft on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. And if building accessibility awareness is important to you, please consider rating Accessibility Craft 5 stars on Apple Podcasts.
Accessibility Craft is produced by Equalize Digital and hosted by Amber Hinds, Chris Hinds, and Steve Jones. Steve Jones composed our theme music. Learn how we help make thousands of WordPress websites more accessible at equalizedigital.com.