AODA—Preparing Your Business For Compliance

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005, (AODA) requires phased-in compliance by public and private organizations, with five sets of mandatory standards to ensure that Ontarians with disabilities are able to obtain full access to goods, services, accommodations, employment, buildings and premises.

Current compliance requirements

Large organizations will need to implement the latest requirements as of January 1, 2014. A large organization is a private sector organization with 50 or more employees in Ontario. Small organizations, which are defined as non-public sector organizations with fewer than 50 employees in Ontario, will have until January 1, 2015, to meet the requirements.
Organizations are required to:

• Establish accessibility policies, which state how the organization achieves or will achieve accessibility and include a statement of organizational commitment;
• Establish and implement multi-year accessibility plans (does not apply to small organizations), which set out the organization's strategy for removing barriers to accessibility and for meeting its obligations under the AODA.

In addition, large organizations will be required to make any new Internet websites and web content accessible. New websites and content must conform with WCAG 2.0 Level A by January 1, 2014. WCAG 2.0 sets out guidelines for organizations to follow to make their websites more accessible. There are three levels of accessibility and further levels of accessibility will be required in the future.

Do you know how far toward compliance your company is?

If you are interested in learning more about Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) or how to make accessibility a natural part of your business through the application of Corporate Social Responsibility, please contact Sandra Broekhof @ 416-579-1035 orsandra_broekhof@sympatico.ca