Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act becomes Law in Ontario
WATS.ca is reporting that the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act has become Law in Ontario. Some big changes (thanks Derek) are:
- It applies to the private sector.
- Enforcement of the law is now possible for both the public and private sector.
- Timelines for compliance based on a number of factors, but there will be different timelines for different things. (
guess is 1-3 yrs for web).
So what does this mean for UW web pages? Unsure as yet. Government people have yet to be put in place and other things decided. I would expect a trickle over the summer… shall try to stay updated. Right now it doesn’t mean a whole lot. The CLF introduces a new standards based solution for web pages and a templating scheme that will make accessibility based additions very easy. Office for Person’s with Disabilities along with other groups on campus will be looking at accessibility and the legislations impact on campus over the coming months.
The trick for now will be in your content. How you code, what you code, how do you refer to .ppt’s, PDF’s, .doc’s, Flash, etc. I am currently working on a style guide that includes a mark-up guide, CSS naming conventions, and best practices for referring to other document types. Expect to see pieces of it up shortly in draft form.
This was updated after a discussion with Rose Padacz, Director of the Office for Person’s with Disabilities.
