Are you based in Ontario? This may be of interest.

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) was enacted in 2005 and set out a clear goal and time frame to make Ontario accessible by 2025.

"That's a long way off," we hear you say. "How does that affect my brand?"

There are certain timelines in place depending on the type of organization. There are also certain design standards that you can implement.

Do you need to be compliant? Probably.

Bad news: There's too much information to include here on AODA and accessibility.
Good news: We have experts in our team that we can connect you with for advice and guidance.

Please contact us if you'd like a website audit completed, or need advice on AODA and how it pertains to your brand or digital products.

Some useful links to get you thinking about AODA and accessibility:

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0

• Accessibility in Ontario

Here's how we've optimized the Herb Communications website; we're striving to improve accessibility for our users and are always working towards additional enhancements:

Navigation to each item is possible by tabbing. The visually impaired may have accessibility features enabled that will also define what element is being tabbed. Our template is coded so it can be easily read and browsed by assistive software, and we use HTML5 to increase usability by clearly defining important elements on the page, such as navigation or header/footer areas. We also use role attributes and microformatting that helps vision-impaired readers. The font size is at least 14px, there's lots of white space, good contrast in the colours and alt tags in the images.

If you have any feedback regarding screen reading, screen magnification or speech recognition software, please let us know so we can improve our site experience for all visitors.