Transcript of “Canada’s new ACA ICT Phase 1 digital accessibility regulations | David Berman webinar | 29 Jan 2026”

This is a transcript of the video Canada’s new ACA ICT Phase 1 digital accessibility regulations | David Berman webinar | 29 Jan 2026

[The speaker is formally dressed, head and torso visible, standing in front of an office backdrop with “davidberman.communications” logo on the wall]

DAVID BERMAN: Hello, everyone.
I see people are streaming in.
We have over 400 registrants and counting from over 17 countries, which thrills me because I’m so excited to be sharing the news that just last month, Canada released the ICT regulations for digital accessibility.
Hey, for those of you who don’t know me, I’d like to start off with a land acknowledgment.
This online event is taking place on the traditional, unceded land of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.
I’d like us to all take a moment to acknowledge the situation wherever we live.
So I’m David Berman, and I see lots of friends in the audience and people I’ve known for years and lots of people who are strangers I just haven’t met
And so I want you to know that I’ve worked with governments and developers, comms teams on five continents on helping them make their websites, and their documents, and their apps comply with accessibility regulations.
And I can tell you– and this was even true for me as a young graphic designer who was overwhelmed by accessibility standards when I first discovered them.
I can tell you that it’s reasonable that people are afraid that it’s going to be expensive, and it may cause you to have to compromise the product.
Not so.
Indeed, that could happen if you don’t know the best approach, but I promise that we can show your teams how we can make your apps, your documents, your sites not just conform to regulations, but be better for our entire audience in ways that actually drive down costs and almost always without trade-off.
First, though, I’d like to start off with the ground rules for today.
So worked hard to create an event that is accessible, that accommodates, no, delights as many people as possible.
So whether you’re on Windows or Mac OS or iOS or Android, your Zoom interface should by default be able to present be presenting my camera and my shared screen of my slides and broadcasting my voice.
As well, you should have the option of displaying the ASL and LSQ sign language interpretation that we have today courtesy of our sponsor, the Canadian Association of the Deaf, CAD-ASC.
So if any of that’s not working as you desire, please ask our team for help.
And the way we do that is in the chat window, which you all have access to, you have the option to chat just to hosts and panelists.
So if you need technical help, please send a message to hosts and panelists.
And one of our team members will do what they can to help you out.
Now chat is accessible in Windows by Alt-H or Command-Shift-H.
Now if you have questions about the topic, then we use the Q&A window for that, and you have the option to post questions anonymously or with your name.
And if you do that and you have a follow-up question, please start a new question.
Our plan is that I’m going to present for about an hour once we get the ground rules behind us.
And then we’ll open it up for questions for as long as you have questions.
Now, just like in a real room, you can raise your hand if you have something to share, and we’ll probably wait till the Q&A to invite you to speak in that case.
The way that works is you use the Raise Hand button in the Zoom interface, which is labeled Raise Hand.
It’s also Alt-Y on Windows or Option-Y on Macs.
And to lower your hand, you use the same button.
Now, for audio, in the unlikely– most people won’t be presenting their voice today.
But if you are in a situation where you’re using your mic, please mute your mic when you’re not speaking.
Also, it’s possible some people will dial in through audio, through the phone.
And if they do that, we’ll make sure we enable your mic in case you wish to use your voice to chat or ask questions.
Now, if you would– by default, the video is not on for the attendees in Zoom webinar.
However, if you’d like to express yourself using sign language, for example.
So you need to turn on your video, please send a chat message to host and panelists with your request.
And then what they will do is we’ll promote you to a panelist so that you can then turn on your video, present your question, and get an answer.
Now, regarding closed captions and transcription, our other sponsor today is 3PlayMedia.
And so their Canadian headquarters in Alberta is already generating us fine captions.
So today’s captioning is professional live captioning.
It’s not auto-generated by Zoom.
We also will have in the recording, which you may be watching already– we will have French captions and subtitles available, but we’re going to prepare them afterwards.
So to view the closed captions in the Zoom interface, you need to select the Show Captions choice in the control bar.
If you’re not seeing it in your control bar, then choose the More button with the three dots.
And then from the Captions menu, you can also choose to view the full transcript.
And you can use caption settings to also mess with how they look.
However, people who really like to depend on captions often use something called StreamText.
And if you’ve never heard of StreamText before, you may find this interesting just to check it out because it’s one more really amazing accessibility tool that’s very popular, especially in North America.
So in addition to the captions that appear in Zoom, we also have 3PlayMedia is streaming all of the caption transcripts to this tool called StreamText.
And so what you do is you launch a– in a separate browser window, you launch this link we have, and the link is in the webinar chat now.
We have one link for English.
And then in there, you’ll find there’s a dropdown menu to get to French.
Now, the English captions, they are professionally being transcribed in real time.
For the French, these are machine-generated translation of that English.
And when we have our recording ready, our plan is to have a full manually cleaned and pressed French version to share later.
I want you to imagine for a moment that it’s 1917.
It’s over 100 years ago, and you’re visiting Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Everyone’s glued to watching this crazy thing that’s going on in the harbor.
There’s these two enormous ships, and they’re slowly, slowly looking like they’re going to collide.
And indeed, what happens– the tragedy that occurred in the Halifax explosion was that a French ship, which was full of 2,600 tons of explosives that were bound for France to support the war effort in Europe, was collided with a ship full of relief goods.
And the resulting explosion in a city that only had 50,000 people at the time, 2,000 people died, 9,000 were injured, and hundreds and hundreds of people suffered lifelong vision loss because they happened to be staring at what was going on when the ship exploded.
Now, Canada, we have a long history of building positive outcomes from tragic circumstances.
And indeed, the silver lining was that that very year, the Canadian National Institute of the Blind was created as a result of so many people needing help with visual impairments.
Now, fast forward to the mid-1950s, the CNIB was now the largest NGO of its kind in the world.
And the CNIB builds the world’s first training course for blind computer programmers.
And this is remarkable considering if you studied the type of labor that was often given to people who were blind or visually impaired up to that point, this was quite a breakthrough.
And the CNIB has been responsible for all kinds of amazing global impact, including helping develop unified English Braille, developing affordable assistive technologies.
And this Canadian history continues, because in 1953, the electric wheelchair was invented at the National Research Council, which a bunch of our pals in the NRC are with us today.
And George Klein at the Montreal Road campus invented the electric wheelchair right here in Ottawa.
In 1972, the world’s first computerized braille printer was invented by a Canadian, Roland Galarneau, what is now Gatineau, across the river from where I’m standing.
In 1981, Canada was responsible for the invention of the world’s first true digital camera.
And you can’t have digital accessibility without digital images.
In 2000, Henry Vlug, a lawyer, breakthrough activist lawyer, forced the government of Canada to make sure that everything on Canadian TV would be captioned, not just this show or that show.
And this was a first in the world, and it stuck since then.
In 2001, the Canadian Association of the Deaf, our sponsor, was involved heavily in the advocacy to make sure that the 711 service that had been invented in Canada was now adopted throughout the United States.
And by December 2001, that had happened.
Also in 2001, the release of Braille blocks on currency.
I’m showing on camera a $20 bill, and I’m showing how there’s tactile dots on the 20 as well as I’ve got all the different currency from that time.
The thing is that braille blocks on currency are a Canadian invention.
And, in fact, a person who is arguably the strongest advocate for it from the CNIB, who convinced the Bank of Canada to test this until it happened– [? Vangelis ?] [? Nicias, ?] I believe, is with us today as well.
So thank you so much for showing up today, [? Vangelis.
?] And pass that, over half a dozen countries in the world have followed the exact Canadian system of Braille blocks to currency.
And the United States also is planning on using the Canadian system starting this December, starting with the $10 bill.
In 2013, eSight Corporation, right here in Ontario, invented the world’s first computerized glasses.
In 2016, our accessibility minister, our federal accessibility minister, Carla Qualtrough, made the Marrakesh Treaty a reality.
And the Neil Squire society, which we love working with, invented the LipSync.
And if there’s time later, someone can ask me– I could demo the LipSync for you.
But basically, this was a breakthrough in terms of a device that allows people with severe mobility challenges to navigate websites, apps, et cetera using their mouth.
A sip puff device that includes using your lips like a mouse pad.
In 2018, Carleton University, arguably the most accessible university in North America, started the world’s first interdisciplinary graduate program in accessibility, called READi.
Very proud to have been a part of that.
And in 2019, the invention of the world’s first caption quality standard system.
I’m actually going to bring up a poll right now.
And my poll question, which I’m posting now– the question is this, which government on Earth was the first to legally mandate that its public-facing websites had to conform to a version of WCAG? And the choices I’m giving are Australia, Canada, Illinois, Ottawa, Ontario, Italy, or the United States.
[MUSIC PLAYING] Give you a bit of time to keep voting.
[MUSIC PLAYING] Votes are still streaming in.
Wow, 240 people have now joined this meeting.
[MUSIC PLAYING] Well, it’s really close.
And I’m closing the ballots now.
And I’ll share the results on screen.
But 34% of you believe it was Canada, but 33% believe it was Ontario, and 11% say it’s Ottawa.
And I’ll let you see those results now for those who can perceive it.
And you guys are right.
It was Canada.
Canada was the first in the world.
And so now I’m shifting to legislation, which makes sense because that’s what this is all about today, giving you the background first before we get there.
So, indeed, Canada came first.
And number two, by the way, was Ottawa.
Sneaky that.
OK, so I’m going to stop sharing those results now.
And, indeed– point out that, indeed, in 2000, the first government to legally mandate WCAG conformance was the government of Canada through the CLF Standards.
And I’m showing a screen cap that is like Microsoft Explorer from 1999 screen capture of what a government web page looked like then.
And then in 2005, Ontario did another world first, which is that Ontario’s AODA legislation had regulations which didn’t just demand that the government have accessible sites, but that the private sector did as well.
And that was a world first.
And indeed, that type of thinking has rippled across Canada.
We now have six provinces, seven provinces actually now, who have provincial legislation either that’s been– there’s an act, some of them have regs.
So Ontario and Manitoba already enacted and Quebec as well.
And they all call for certain levels of WCAG.
And then so the Norwegians looked at what Ontario did.
And in 2013, they issued regulations that were shockingly similar to Ontario’s because we worked together on this.
And the result was Norway demanded WCAG 2.0 AA conformance for every business in the country, not just ones over a certain number of people.
And then that led to Israel doing the same thing, and all of the Europeans grabbed on to it as well.
But then in 2019, we got our Accessible Canada Act, passed June 2019, that obligated federal departments as well as federally regulated organizations.
Many world firsts came out of that.
So the ACA recognized sign languages, and it was the first time that legislation anywhere on Earth had recognized multiple sign languages as the primary languages of the nation’s Deaf people.
And also, as the act demanded, Accessible Standards Canada was established.
In the act, it was called CASDO.
But Accessible Standards Canada was established, which has been doing amazing things ever since.
And then by 2021, the first regulations came out for the ACA, which the regulations we’ll be talking about today stand on the shoulders of.
Indeed, the regulations we’re talking about today effectively are an amendment to those original regulations, which leads us finally to a month ago on December 17.
But the registration date is the 5th of December, so the December 5 is the date we have to know because the regulations say things like in one year after the registration date, this happens, two years, three years, four years, et cetera.
So Canada published the ACA ICT Phase 1 Regulations.
And the term Phase 1 Regulations is the moniker that we’ll be using to refer to them the most.
And essentially, the Phase 1 Regulations, which came out last month, demand something called– and this is a mouthful– EN 301 549 conformance by federal government and medium and large-sized federally regulated businesses.
And it regulates them– it regulates web pages, mobile apps, and digital documents.
There’s also procurement clauses and training clauses and reporting clauses.
And we’re going to unpack them today.
So for starters, you may be wondering, hey, is my organization obligated? And essentially, there are three main groups of obligated organizations, all federal government entities.
And then in the private sector, there are what are called large federally regulated private sector entities.
And by large, this is defined as organizations that have an average of 500 or more employees.
And then there’s also the group known as medium-sized federally regulated private sector entities.
And these are ones that have an average of a 100 to 499 employees.
There’s also a category called small federally regulated private sector entities, but they do not have obligations under the law.
Now, also, if any of you had read the earlier regulations, There was no distinction there between large and medium sized.
Medium size is a new term.
So the large got split into two groups.
So we now have three groups, 500 or more for large, 100 to 499 for medium sized, and below 100 is called small.
And there are ways of calculating average.
I’m showing you a material from our course, and this is a half-day or a full-day course on the regs.
I’m showing you a highlight reel, pulling slides based on the questions people asked during registrations.
If I skipped over something that’s really important to you, you can also bring it up in the Q&A.
So if those groups are obligated, then who is exempt? And so to summarize, if you’re a non-federal government, let’s say you’re the city of Ottawa or the government of Ontario, you are exempt because you’re not a federal government.
And then if you’re a business of any size but you’re not federally regulated, then you’re also not obligated under the Phase 1 Regulations.
And then even small federally regulated businesses are exempt from what’s called for in the Phase 1 Regulations.
In addition, First Nations band councils have a time limited exemption until December 2033.
But nonetheless, and we have dozens of people from the group I’m about to mention, which are people who supply stuff to federally regulated businesses, to the federal government.
And so if you’re producing sites or apps or documents for any of the entities that are obligated, you need to be aware of what their procurement requirements are so you can keep providing services to the government or to larger regulated businesses.
So I’ve created a chart, and I’m going to describe this chart.
But basically, what I’ve done is I’ve summarized all the deadlines into one chart.
And basically, the message here is we’ve got one set of deadlines for the federal government, another set of deadlines for large federally regulated businesses, and another for medium-sized federally regulated businesses.
There’s three kinds of things that need to be made accessible.
There are web pages.
And web pages includes– web pages includes web apps as well, so browser-based apps are also considered websites.
And mobile apps are a second group.
And we’re talking about public-facing mobile apps only.
So if there was an internally facing mobile app, that’s not covered by the Phase 1 deadlines, whereas web pages include all sites, whether they’re facing our staff or they’re facing outwardly.
And then the third group of things that need to be made accessible are digital documents.
And I’m going to unpack the details of each of these things and what their deadlines are for each, federal government and businesses.
And just to clarify, because only the federal government has obligations.
That means that provincial health authorities, assuming that’s part of the provincial government, are not obligated under these regulations.
Municipal governments are not obligated under these regulations.
And regarding how we count employees, like do I have 500-plus employees or not, there’s a formula, which I can share with you or you can read about it, which very precisely describes how you count your employees, including your contracted employees, and how you average that over a three-year period to determine if at this moment you’re considered a 500-plus business versus a 100-plus business versus less than 100 regulated business.
So we’re going to unpack the web pages, the mobile apps, and the digital documents.
Then we’re going to go to the other three things that are obligated under the Phase 1 deadlines that have deadlines.
And they are accessibility statements.
This is something new.
It’s not the accessibility plan that your organization already had to produce– possibly– had to produce every three years and issue an update every year, intervening year.
This is something new.
It’s called an accessibility statement.
The next thing is procurement.
There are rules on how you buy services for web pages, mobile apps, and digital documents, and you have to start buying them a certain way.
And then finally, there’s training.
And so there’s that training obligation that certain members of your teams have to train up on digital accessibility.
And we’ll unpack that as well.
So those are the six things that we’re going to be exploring.
So let’s start off with the web pages.
They’re probably the biggest part of stuff that we all have to deal with.
So under the Phase 1 regs for web pages, which includes web-based applications, the deadline for federal government entities is two years beyond the day the legislation was published.
So therefore, December 5, 2027 is our deadline if you’re federal government.
Whereas if you’re large or medium-sized businesses, then you get three years rather than two years.
So it’s December 5, 2028.
I’m not going to cover this today because there’s a lot to it.
But there’s two other groups that have their own similar set of rules but differ a bit.
There’s two groups.
One is called Transportation Service Providers, which are often known as TSPs.
There’s transportation service providers in government, and there’s some amongst business.
And then there’s another group called the BTOs, which is not a reference to great Canadian music.
It’s actually a reference to Broadcasting and Telecommunication Organizations.
So the TSPs and the BTOs already had regulations issued for them, some under the ACA and some before that.
And so they have different rules for different things.
And that’s something I can unpack for you another day.
Or you can contact us and help you figure that out if you are a TSP or a BTO or you’re providing stuff to TSPs or BTOs.
So web pages are defined as all public-facing and internal employee-facing web pages and web applications, including their content.
But there’s a separate– there’s separate regulations for digital documents.
And anything you’re downloading from the web page is considered a digital document.
So everything on your web page, except perhaps the downloadable digital documents, that’s covered elsewhere.
Now there is an exclusion for anything that was published before the deadline that has not been updated.
And this is common with web regs where we say– what do you do with legacy stuff? So the deal is if you promise to never change that stuff at all, it doesn’t have to conform to the standard even after the deadline.
But any sort of update– but functionality, language, anything is enough to end the exclusion.
In Ontario, for example, if you’re familiar with the AODA, the exclusion was if at least 50% of the content was updated, not at all here.
If any updates at all exist, then that web page or web app has to conform.
So what does it have to conform to? Well, the accessibility standard– and it’s going to be very similar for the web pages, and for the apps, and the mobile apps, as well as the documents is something called EN 301 549, which is really hard to remember.
It may take a while to roll off your tongue, but it’s a wonderful thing, except for its name.
So I’m going to unpack that for you shortly.
But also know that in our act, we refer to something called the ICT standard.
And that’s very equivalent to EN 301 549.
So I’m going to demystify that shortly.
But whether we’re looking at EN 301 549 or we’re looking for the ICT standard, we’re looking at something called clauses 4 to 7 and 9.
And I know this sounds so lawyerly, but fear not, I’m going to unpack that for you.
So right now, for example, for web pages, we’re going to go find out, what’s EN 301 549? What’s an ITC standard? And what are these clauses? I’m supposed to remember 4 to 7 and 9.
So for starters EN 301 549, they realize the reason it’s named this is that the European Union issues things called norms.
So EN stands for European Norm.
So it’s not a short form for EN English at all.
It’s a European Norm.
And it happens to be because of its nature of technicalness.
It’s in the 301 group.
And it happens to be the 549th one ever.
Now, the EN 301 549 is a harmonized standard that defines accessibility standards for ICT, which means Information and Communication Technologies.
And this is– it’s kind of a wonderful thing.
It was one of the people who asked questions ahead, Nadine from Foresters Financial.
She was mentioning, how do you manage sites on multiple geographies? And the wonderful idea of having a global norm, a global harmonized standard is something that the EU embraced and Canada has embraced and other regions have embraced.
So we embraced it big.
And I’m proud to have been involved with the Accessibility Standards Canada, and choosing to say, let’s take the European norm, the EN 301 549, and let’s make it a Canadian standard.
And indeed, in May 2025, the Standards Council of Canada, working with ASC, published a Canadian version of EN 301 549 called the CAN/ASC EN 301 549.
And it’s an exact replica of the 2021 version that the Europeans published, and it was published in both English and French.
The European norms only published in English.
So now we have an English and French version for Canada, which is word for word, concept by concept, the same as the EN 301 549 standard, which is used around the world.
Now, we know how hard it is to say EN 301 549, so kindly, in the legislation, in Canadian federal regulations, it’s known as the ICT Standard.
And so when you see ICT Standard in the regs, it’s the same as EN 301 549, the Canadian release, which has the same content as the European release, which means the whole global ecosystem that’s been working to make it easy for all kinds of organizations to conform with EN 301 549 is the same ecosystem that’s going to make it easy for us to get it done as well.
But you remember three slides ago, perhaps, if you were watching the slides, that I said that this web page rule says you have to conform to certain clauses of the ICT Standard.
So EN 301 549 is made up of 14 clauses, but there’s only seven of them that are mentioned anywhere in the Phase 1 regulations.
Still, I’m showing a slide with tiny type on it, making it clear to everyone how scary these clauses look.
No problem, I’m going to unpack it.
But the seven clauses that are mentioned, we’re going to break them down into three groups.
So you may remember we had Clause 4, Clause 5, Clause 6 and Clause 7 for the web pages, plus Clause 9.
So it’s going to be the same for the, almost the same for the apps and it’s almost same for the documents.
So Clause 4 is a really special thing that was invented for EN 301 549 called functional performance statements.
And this really speaks to, well– a number of questions we got in advance was, do we get to go beyond WCAG? And I’m going to say, yeah, we do.
So functional performance statements say when all is done with the technical requirements, is it still actually going to work for real people doing real things? So Clause 4 is all about that.
Clause 5, 6, and 7 are specific technical requirements that the EU thought that WCAG didn’t go far enough.
So they decided to put in a number of other things, and most of them don’t apply to websites and web pages and web apps and documents.
They’re often for types of information communication technology that WCAG doesn’t fit so well for.
But some of it applies.
So I’ll just give one example, and that will be it for the day.
So for example, one of these technical requirements is, not only do you have to follow WCAG in terms of everything about multimedia, but in your multimedia player, the actual player that’s viewable on screen, the closed caption control has to be as prominent as the play or the pause control.
And that goes beyond what WCAG called for.
So there’s a few handfuls of these very clever additional distinctions, and that’s an example of something that would apply to websites.
Now, Clause 9, Clause 10 and Clause 11.
Well, for Clause 9, which is for websites, it declares WCAG 2.1 AA technical requirements meant to apply to web content.
And 10 is the exact same sentence, Clause 10 is the same sentence, but applies to non-web documents or digital documents.
And Clause 11 is the exact same sentence but now applying to mobile applications.
So all of these things lead back to WCAG 2.1.
So for those of you who are not familiar with WCAG, we’re going to jump there now.
And then, I’m going to circle back and mention these functional performance statements, because they’ll be more meaningful after we’ve chatted about what is WCAG.
It’s kind of remarkable that WCAG is not mentioned anywhere in the regulations.
But the way we get to WCAG is WCAG is mentioned in the ICT Standard, which is mentioned in the regulations.
So Clause 9, Clause 10 and Clause 11 apply to web content, digital documents and mobile apps.
And they all come back to saying you need to conform with WCAG 2.1 AA.
So I’m going to give you just a one on one on what is WCAG.
And I also want to say WCAG, because you can say like, W-C-A-G, and that’s OK.
But the cool kids often say like, WCAG.
So they’re pronouncing the letter W, but then taking the C-A-G and making it into a little word, CAG.
So W, WCAG.
WCAG.
What you never want to be saying is W-CAG.
If you say W, the letter, followed by the CAG, then people are going to know you haven’t been doing this for very long.
So WCAG 1.0 was actually invented back in 1999 by a global consortium at the W3C, involving many Canadians.
And to understand the regulations, we have to understand how WCAG is structured.
So the way it works is W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, publishes many standards, and one of them is called WCAG.
And WCAG is made up of many things, but includes a bunch of things called success criteria.
And I’m going to show you a list.
For example, for WCAG, we’re going to be looking at about 50 of them, but they’re classified by 3 levels.
Now, WCAG has been trending all over the world.
It’s hard to find any accessibility regulation anywhere on Earth that doesn’t refer to WCAG when it comes to accessibility legislation for information, communication technologies, websites, apps, documents.
And so the good news is, learning WCAG is something that’s valuable no matter where you are on Earth.
And WCAG 2.1, that’s the current most popular version.
There is a 2.2, but the most popular version named in regulations is WCAG 2.1, and it’s been out for eight years now.
In fact, the Canadian government in 2020, Treasury Board, actually made it a best practice to follow WCAG 2.1 and EN 301 549.
And indeed, a number of the larger departments and agencies in the federal government have been doing this for a while, which is great news, because it means that there won’t be that much work to do to conform to the Phase 1 regulations.
But WCAG 2.1, there’s more countries that name 2.1 in their legislation than by far, over 30 countries, compared to just a few who still name 2.0.
Now, no matter what version of WCAG you’re working at, you’re working with, whether it’s 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, there’s three levels.
The Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA.
Now, the idea is that if you don’t do all the Level A things, then many people will find it impossible to get things done.
If you don’t do the Level AA things, then many people are going to find it difficult to get things done.
And in WCAG 2.1, there’s 30 Level A success criteria and 20 Level AA success criteria.
So that’s 30 plus 20, so that’s 50 success criteria to bring a product to WCAG 2.1 AA conformance.
Because if you don’t conform to every level A and every level AA success criteria, you cannot declare the entire document or app or website as WCAG 2.1 AA conformant.
There’s also AAA success criteria, and you may be thinking, oh, let’s do them as well.
But in fact, I said when we started off, we can do this without trade offs.
And I promise you, we can find a way to do it without trade offs when we’re at the AA level.
But at the AAA level, there intentionally are trade offs.
These are success criteria that are more intended for specific target groups.
So all that to say, we’re not going to mention AAA again today, but we are going to focus on AA conformance, 2.1 AA conformance.
And what that means is I’m now showing a list of all 50 of the WCAG 2.1 A and AA success criteria.
They’re all numbered.
And one of the questions, comments I got in advance was from Kevin Shaw at ESDC, who was accurately saying that one of our biggest problems with our websites is that there’s poor or a lack of keyboard navigation, as well as security, often winning out over accessibility.
And so we have a success criteria for each of those things.
For 2.11, success rate of 2.1, make sure that we have keyboard accessibility.
It’s a Level A criteria.
It’s fundamental.
And where the trade offs can occur in, let’s say, a success criterion like 221, which is timing adjustable, we have figured out no trade off responses, how we can have security and accessibility working together to not have to fall short on either side.
But I’m really glad.
Thanks, Kevin, for pointing it out.
And for those of you who are already familiar with WCAG 2.0, 2.1 simply took everything in 2.0 and added 12 new success criteria.
So it’s not like you have to start from scratch.
You just start with everything for 2.0 AA, and you just add to that the 12 new success criteria and you’re there.
So, for example, if you’re an organization in Ontario who had to conform to Ontario’s laws, or you’ve been supplying products to the US federal government, who’s still, their regulations still call for WCAG 2.0, then you don’t have to start from scratch.
You just have to take care of these 12 additional Level A and AA success criteria.
There were 38 in Level A, and now there’s 50 in total for 2.0– I’m sorry, 38 for 2.0 AA, and now a total of 50 for 2.1 AA.
And if you’re interested in the difference, I’ve got a whole webinar on that davidberman.com/wcag21webinar.
You can go and watch that webinar if you’re interested in what changed from 2.0 to 2.1.
Now, there’s something else going on Earth, though, that in order for you to come up with your strategic plan, we’re going to talk about next steps at the end, but where do you start attacking this thing? Is we need to talk about WCAG 2.2 a little bit.
And here’s why.
There’s a new version of EN 301 549 coming out soon.
I mean, it’s already drafted and it’s going to be adopted sometime later in 2026 by the EU.
So at that point, there’ll be an EN 301 549 version out.
And it’s got a few changes in it, but 99% of the change is they’re going from WCAG 2.1 to WCAG 2.2.
Now, consider this.
In the ICT, in the Phase 1 regulations, there’s a stipulation that says that if a new version of the ITC standard should be published, that is to say, if Accessible Standards Canada decides to put out a new version of Canada’s ICT standard and also go to WCAG 2.2, then the obligated entities have up to three years to conform to either that new version or the previous version, the one we have right now, which means you’ve got this three year period where you can either do 2.1 or 2.2.
Now, there’s another stipulation in the Phase 1 regulations that also says you can, if a new EN 301 549 comes out, not the ICT standard, but the one in Europe comes out, you also have the option to conform to it.
So in other words, if let’s say this European upgrade comes out in September this year– that’s my best guess– then you now can start conforming– you could fulfill the Phase 1 regs by simply conforming to 2.2, because it’s still going to be around when your deadline comes up.
And whether ASC publishes a new version or not, before your deadline comes up, you’ve got this three year period.
So I’m suggesting that unless you have strong reasons not to, because I’ve studied the regulations and I’ve thought through the options, and it is inevitable that the ICT standard will update to 2.2 at some point.
And it’s very possibly going to happen before your first deadline.
And therefore, I suggest you start working to 2.2 AA rather than 2.1 AA wherever it’s feasible, because they’re not that different.
And you’ll have better products sooner for more people, and you’ll spend less money doing it once rather than twice.
In fact, the net difference between 2.1 and 2.2 is much smaller than the difference between 2.0 and 2.1.
There’s only a net gain of six success criteria, Level A and AA, and most of them don’t even apply to many websites or documents or apps.
So I’m suggesting start thinking about 2.2 AA perhaps from the get go.
I know that’s a lot.
It’s a lot of acronyms.
It’s a lot of– but it’s a huge decision to take.
And if you need to brainstorm with us, we’re here.
So that takes care of Clauses 9, 10 and 11.
I promise to circle back to Clause 4, because there’s this great feature in EN 301 549 that goes beyond WCAG, and it’s called functional performance statements.
And so there’s statements, there’s 11 of them.
And the first 10 all have names like, usage without vision, usage without hearing, usage with limited reach.
The idea is they pretty well broken down all the types of differences and challenges people live with and say, hey, at the end of the day, we have to make sure that people in all these groups, or the intersections of those groups, can get everything done.
And so this results in testing that makes sure it works.
Now, there’s also an 11th one, which is very European, called privacy.
And essentially, it’s about having equitable dignity and confidentiality when people are using assistive technologies.
And again, I can unpack that another day, but there’s specific technical things we do to make sure people’s privacy and dignity is preserved on the way to EN 301 549 conformance.
So here’s an example of what I like to call the accessible dividend pays off.
We worked with the Canada Revenue Agency on redeveloping their web strategy so that it was intensely accessible.
And not just web pages, but forms.
And it cost– it took time and money to make it way more accessible.
But here’s the deal.
Every time a Canadian can finish their taxes on their own or go to the website and find all their questions, it costs $0.06 every time someone self serves to get their answer.
Whereas it cost $26 every time they have to call and wait on hold to talk to people to get it done.
So not only did this service the people better, but it actually cut the cost of customer support at the CRA by millions of dollars.
And so you could say, well, of course it was done for all the right social justice reasons, but as well, it was better business and all the users are happier.
This is what we call the accessibility dividend.
When we design for the extremes and we do it well, everyone benefits.
So that was all about the deadlines for websites.
And now, we’re going to shift over to mobile apps.
So a very similar structure to the websites except the deadlines are slightly different.
So for mobile apps, the deadline is the same for everyone.
That’s federal government and large business.
Deadline, three years.
So that’s December 5, 2028.
And there’s no deadline for mobile apps for small or medium-sized businesses.
And there’s no deadline for non-public facing apps for anyone.
Now, there’s a really interesting distinction here about the apps.
So perk up your ears or your eyes.
And we’ve never seen this in legislation, accessibility legislation before.
So for future apps, that is apps that are published on or after December 2028, they must conform to the ICT standard, Clauses 4 to 7 and 11.
Except as I already showed you, 11 is just 10 for mobile apps, so it’s the same requirements.
But for existing apps, all of the obligated entities, the federal government and the large federally regulated businesses, they have to assess their existing apps.
They don’t have to make them accessible, but they do have to take an assessment of the accessibility of the apps if they’re planning on keeping them online beyond December 5, 2028.
I’ll talk a little bit more about assessment very soon, but that’s an interesting regulation.
So there’s nothing in the Phase 1 app saying when those need to be accessible.
Maybe that’s in Phase 2.
But the requirement is for the existing apps, if you’re going to keep them live, you’re going to have to do an assessment of them.
Now, for the third group of things needing to be made accessible– there was websites.
There was mobile apps.
The third group is non-web documents, which the regulation refers to more often as digital documents.
The reason they use this phrase non-web documents is that’s language that’s in EN 301 549.
And it’s kind of confusing, but it’s in there, so we got to reference it back.
So whether you call them non-web documents or you call them digital documents, there’s a deadline for federal– just like the mobile apps, federal government and only large federally regulated businesses need to conform in three years.
That’s December 5, 2028.
And what’s included are all new or updated digital documents that are available for download from web pages or apps.
And if you’re wondering what kind of digital documents? ESDC has explained that it includes documents like PDF files, WordPress processing files and presentation files.
Now, there is an exclusion for things that were published before the deadline that have not been updated.
And even, that means– yeah, so legacy documents don’t have to conform.
And again, the standard we’re holding it to is EN 301 549, which is the ICT Standard Clauses 4 to 7 and 10.
And again, small and medium-sized businesses have no deadlines.
I mean, unless you’re small or medium-sized businesses at TSB, then that’s the only place where that could come up.
Now, there’s also the W3C, who publishes WCAG.
I was proud to be involved with this.
They published something with a horrible name called WCAG2ICT.
What they’re trying to say this is how you take WCAG, which really was designed specifically for websites, and apply it to non-web documents.
So there’s actually a guidance material which explains to us how to apply those 50 success criteria in WCAG 2.1 AA to non-web documents.
And that’s how we do it.
So those are the three groups of things we may need to make accessible.
And now, I want to pivot to the other three things that Phase 1 regulations call for us to do.
So I’m going to go over these things fairly briefly.
So first of all, these new things called accessibility statements, just the federal government and the large federally regulated businesses have to published something called an accessibility statement.
And what it does is it tells you what websites we have and how accessible are they, and what mobile apps and digital documents we have, and how accessible are they.
And so we’re taking inventory.
And then, after the first publishing of the statement, they must update it every 12 months.
So imagine an annual thing where you refresh your list of what you have and confirm it’s accessible.
Or if it’s not accessible, explain why.
Now, the federal government has an obligation that’s only two years out, just for the websites.
And then, for the mobile apps and the digital documents, they get three years.
For the large federally regulated businesses, they get three years for all of it.
So those are deadlines in December 2027 and December 2028, depending on who you are.
And again, we can go deeper another time on actually what makes an accessibility statement.
Now, the second last big ask in the ask with a deadline in the Phase 1 regs are procurement.
And this is about buying stuff.
So again, it’s only federal government and large federally regulated businesses who have to do this.
And they’re saying starting three years out– that’s December 5, 2028– all procurements have, for web pages or web-based applications or mobile apps, must, as part of the procurement process, demand a conformity assessment, including a gap analysis, of the thing they’re thinking of buying from whomever.
Because we need a conformity assessment to say, yeah, what we’re buying, what we’re licensing, what we’re customizing also conforms to the ICT Standard.
And the way that works is, you may be wondering, what’s a conformity assessment and what’s a gap analysis? Well, fortunately, our industry, I’ve been privileged enough to be the global chair of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals who create this ecosystem.
and we have standard ways of doing these things.
So I’m just going to briefly explain how that works.
So first of all– and you’ll see this mentioned in the regulations– there’s something called a VPAT.
Or when we speak of this, we call it a VPAT.
So that’s like a VPAT.
If you asked me for a V-P-A-T, I maybe even, what did they ask for? It’s that uncommon to call these things V-P-A-Ts.
So again, if you want to be one of the cool kids, you call it a VPAT.
Now, a VPAT stands for, V-P-A-T is Voluntary Product Accessibility Template.
And there’s a European group that publishes the official standard template.
It’s a template for producing something called an Accessibility Conformance Report, a ACR.
So even though people really need to give you an ACR, it’s so common to refer to the reports that come from these templates as VPATs as well.
You’ll hear these two terms intermingled.
So if someone says, I’ve got a VPAT for Microsoft Office to show you, they really mean they’ve got an accessibility conformance report.
Let me show you.
I’m going to show a picture right now.
I’m showing a picture of what the blank template looks like, that’s published by the Europeans, of the VPAT.
And then, I’m showing a picture of what an ACR, an Accessible Conformance Report looks like when we do one for our clients.
This is one we did recently for an amazing software firm in Montreal called Explorance.
And they were able to meet or exceed both WCAG 2.1 in AA and 2.2 AA.
And so we’ve got all our professional certifications proudly there, all the badges, the global badges for accessibility testing from the IAAP.
And it breaks down everything about and demonstrates how they meet, how they meet or exceed the EN 301 549 standard, WCAG 2.2, WCAG 2.1, WCAG 2.0, all in one standard document.
However, when we’re trying to show the detail of how someone reached conformance.
We usually instead do a gap analysis, and you could put the gap analysis inside the ACR or the VPAT.
But typically, a better approach is we develop something called an accessibility remediation report.
It doesn’t just show the gaps.
It actually includes detailed recommendations on how to close every gap.
So when we’re hired by someone like Explorance or various government departments who have us do these things, we don’t just find the gaps.
We say, our team of experts recommends these are ways you could close those gaps in a way that’s more sustainable, most effective, et cetera.
And in fact, I’m really proud– shameless plug– I’m proud to say that we were awarded a standing offer in every region across Canada.
We were rated number one in conformance assessments.
So whether it was websites, mobile apps, non-web, documents, PDFs, non-PDFs, we’re really good at this.
And the government of Canada agrees.
[LAUGHS] But whether we’re going to train you to do this yourselves and create your own ACRs, or you’re going to hire a firm like ours or someone else to produce that ACR for you, we’ve got advice on what to watch out for, because an ACR that’s developed by people with certifications is obviously going to be more credible than someone who doesn’t have those certifications.
Now, the final thing, the final item that Phase 1s were calling for is training.
And what they’re asking for is training of people in every federal government and large and medium-sized federally regulated business by December 5, 2027.
This is the only deadline there is for business that’s not three years out.
It’s only two years out.
What they’re calling for is digital accessibility training on the fundamentals.
And they’ve identified that every employee in your organization involved in either the development or maintenance or support or procurement of digital technologies needs to take some basic training.
And pass that deadline, they expect new hires to do so as well, to receive it as soon as possible, as maybe as part of onboarding.
And also, it’s not just training on the accessibility of those three groups, web pages, websites, web apps, mobile apps, documents.
It’s all technologies, digital technologies that are used in your organization.
So that’s going to be a challenge, but I think it’s great because it’s the right way to get things done, to meet all of these deadlines.
And again, I’m showing the chart that summarizes all of the deadlines.
So we’ve gone pretty deep.
And I’m wanting to think at this point, we should– well, one more thing I should mention.
There are a number of conformance exceptions and exemptions in the legislation, and I don’t have time to unpack them for you today, but there are some cases about who the target audience is, or certain types of content or certain types of maps, or other things that just make it really hard because the tools aren’t ready to help you.
So there are a number of designations of places where you’re exempted from meeting the ICT Standard and instead were presented with alternative things you can do until you can meet the EN 305 549 standard, the ICT Standard.
But at this point, I think what I’m going to do is, I’m just going to jump to take some questions.
And then, after we’ve had some questions, we’ll wrap back to what’s next to our recommendations.
So Adrian Hall is asking, what about municipal governments? And Adrian, it’s a pretty simple answer.
If you’re a municipal government, you’re not obligated at all under the Phase 1 regulations, and that’s because you’re not a federal government.
You’re a municipal government.
Now, I see Christine Holmes is asking, if we’re only counting employees within Canada, or is the employee count for the entire organization? That’s a great question, Christine, because there’s actually, the employee counting, if you email me, I’ll send you the full formula.
Or you can also get it from ESDC.
But essentially, for example, imagine you’re a US bank, and you’ve got branches in Canada.
The majority of your operations are outside Canada, but you have people working in Canada, and you have our audience in Canada.
So based on the number of employees you have, that’s going to affect to what degree you have to fulfill the regulations.
And we’ve got a question from Pina D’Intino.
Hey, Pina.
Oh, that’s so cool.
So Pina, I’ve seen there’s a few people on my IAAP Global Leadership Council or x members, and Pina is one of them.
Remarkable person.
Based in Toronto.
Pina asks, Phase 1 does not make any reference to AI, a standard that was also recently released.
Where does that fit within Phase 1? And what are the business’s responsibility to comply to the AI standards as part of Phase 1? Pina, you’re so, so clever, as usual, to bring this up.
And so here’s the deal.
Yes, it’s true that ASC has a standard for AI, but Phase 1 doesn’t speak to AI.
It alludes ESDC, the drafters of the regulations, allude to the idea that in Phase 2, AI is one of the things that will be touched upon, in Phase 2, along with other scoping issues.
So the bottom line is, there’s no reference to AI in the Phase 1 regulations, but it doesn’t mean that whatever interaction involved in AI products doesn’t have to conform to the ICT Standard.
Steffy.
Hey, Steffy [? Leynon ?] from Manitoba.
Regarding provincial health authorities– Steffy’s asking, regarding provincial health authorities, are they part of this as well? And I know that Steffy’s in Winnipeg and is referring to Manitoba as an example.
So Steffy, in Manitoba, a provincial health authority would– the portion that’s part of the provincial government is obligated under the AMA, the Accessibility for Manitobans Act, which calls for WCAG 2.1 AA for external and internal facing products.
But I don’t believe there’s any obligation under the ACA Phase 1 regulations.
And yeah, there’s no obligation because I don’t believe those entities are part of federal government in any way.
But it’s the same WCAG 2.1 AA that’s obligated under the Manitoba legislation.
There’s also a note from Scott Jeffrey asking everyone, hey, maybe I missed it, but is the PowerPoint recording going to be available afterwards? And yeah, Scott, great question.
So absolutely, the recording is going to be available afterwards, because in fact, if you’re watching the recording right now, some time from now and you hear me say this, you can attest to that.
So we are going to make the recording available for all of you, including people who couldn’t be here today.
And Andreas Stefik asks, there was a lot of reference to Phase 1.
Is there a Phase 2? So Andreas, that’s a great question.
And ESDC doesn’t commit to a Phase 2, but certainly identifies the idea that a Phase 2 is the intention, and even alludes to some of the things we imagine would be in Phase 2.
So if you were connecting the dots, for example, the fact that what Phase 1 regs say about conformance for mobile apps, where you only have to assess the existing ones, it would kind of say, hm, you’d think the next shoe would drop.
The mobile apps that were assessed would probably at some point have to become accessible, and that could come under the Phase 2, for example.
My educated guess as an example.
And there are many other ideas that could be in Phase 2.
Now, Sherri Dillon also mentioned– Sherri’s question is as follows.
I am working on a large change management project that is internal to my department.
We are putting up an internal web page in a few weeks, which we are making accessible.
However, there are a lot of links that go to GCdocs.
In other words, to digital documents.
And to be precise, the digital docs, those docs are not accessible.
Given that these digital docs are being published before December 5, 2028, are we in the clear about not breaking the law? Or are we breaking the law? OK, this is just the kind of questions we should be asking ourselves.
So Sherri, let me break this down.
So, Sherri, I’m assuming you’re working for a federal government department, and the internal web page that you’re going live with now needs to be accessible already based on current regulations that aren’t above Phase 1.
And then, there are a lot of links that go to GCdocs.
Now, GCdocs is the government of Canada’s online document system that is a huge repository of documents.
And Sherri’s pointing out that some of those documents don’t conform to accessibility standards.
So I would argue that there are best practices already in the government, if not policies that would say those documents already need to be accessible.
But from the Phase 1 perspective, if on December 6, 2028, your site is still up and it’s pointing to documents for download or linked to documents that are not accessible and no changes have occurred to those documents, then they would be complying with the Phase 1 regs.
And that’s because, as long as you don’t make changes to the documents after December 5, 2028, you’ve fulfilled your obligations under Phase 1 regulations.
Sherri, does that answer it? OK.
Here’s another question from [? Utguder ?] [? Demir ?] [? Yakin.
?] I apologize if I have not pronounced your name perfectly.
The question is, is there a recommended format for accessibility statements and visibility of accessibility statements in the web? For example, one can put the accessibility statement in a hidden page rather than home page’s footer.
Interesting.
So yes, actually, [? Utgu, ?] the Phase 1 regulations are very clear on what makes up an accessibility statement.
In fact, I’m just going to quickly bring that up.
It’s a slide I wasn’t going to go to unless it came up.
I’ll just give you the top edge of this, which is– one moment please.
Just as I locate it, the answer is yes, the regulations are very precise as to what makes up a complying accessibility statement.
It gives us an excellent formula of how to structure it.
And you have the option of having either one accessibility statement for everything you’re obligated to have one for, or you can have multiple accessibility statements.
So an accessibility statement has to provide an overview and describe the accessibility features of the regulated digital technologies.
It also has to provide an overview of any non-conforming digital technologies and what your plans are to address those gaps.
And it also has to explain how users can access any barrier free alternatives that you have to depend upon until you reach full conformance to the ICT Standard.
Now, the accessibility statement has to list all of your websites, both internally facing and externally facing, all your public facing mobile apps, and also has to explain this as well for documents.
Though, it seems reasonable that you talk about groups of documents.
And if you go deeper in the regs, it explains how to structure the statements.
Now, the statements have to be published on your public facing website.
So you can’t hide it somewhere.
It’s got to be somewhere on your main public facing website so that the entire world can have it there.
And also, there’s, I didn’t touch on it, but all of the records and all of the statements you make have to be kept for at least four years in digital format.
All of the reports, anything having to do, any records of training, the regulations are very clear that you have to keep all of those for at least four years from the day the training happened or the statement was published, et cetera.
Mhm.
Yeah.
We have another question.
What courses or certification programs or curriculum do you recommend for training? Well, I’m a little biased because it’s part of what we do.
So when it comes to courses or coaching or learning guides, we’re well known for putting on private events that touch on every one of these topics, whether it’s a course on these regs themselves, but we go way deeper than I did today.
Or whether we’re going deep through every success criteria, a multi-day course where we unpack everything in WCAG 2.2, or whether we have webinars specifically on PowerPoint or multimedia or accessible meetings like this one.
And whether we should use Zoom versus Teams, instructional design, all kinds of stuff.
We love this stuff.
Accessible forms, we’re real masters of that.
And different kinds of forms, different courses.
So I could recommend us.
But at the same time as well, the Canadian School of Public Service, CSPS, as you can imagine, is tooling up as well to be able to provide training for federal government clients.
And as well, there’s many other organizations on Earth who provide courses.
Now, for certification programs, that’s something else.
And so that’s a big question, but what I can unpack for you is that the very best global certifications in this field, and there are different certifications for web developers or for accessible document specialists, the IAAP, which I’ve been involved with for years and so maybe I’m biased, the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, not only provides certifications in all of these areas, but it also catalogs courses, both self-directed and live courses from a variety of very good organizations.
And it’s the kind of thing if you email me, I can give you more information on it.
But I would really– I think you’re going down the right track, because that fits right into the right next steps.
Now, thank you for the question, Anonymouse.
[LAUGHS] And then, Benton Diarra– the question is, regarding the part regarding procurement and training, does it come from ICT Standard, or was it added by the regulators? So let me unpack this, because it’s a great idea that you’re trying to this out.
So the ICT Standard is a standard we measure things against.
So we decide, is this thing accessible enough? And it gives us a way of saying, yes, this website or this app or this instructional design course, or we can apply the ICT Standard to all kinds of things that aren’t touched on the web.
So an airport kiosk, for example, is where EN 301 549 shines.
Because imagine, let’s say you have an Air Canada kiosk where you check in at the airport and you’re going to get your boarding pass.
But it’s not just a machine that has a piece of software on a screen, it’s also a physical object.
If I can’t roll my wheelchair up to it close enough to reach the screen, it’s going to fail EN 301 549.
It’s going to fail the ICT Standard.
And so ICT standard goes broader than just what we talked about today, but it’s still a way of measuring accessibility.
Now, but when we’re talking about training or procurement, the procurement actually is about having people prove to you that their stuff did pass the standard.
So the standard doesn’t talk about procurement and the standard doesn’t talk about training.
You could argue it’s a procurement standard in that it’s saying if you want to procure something, here’s the formula you use to make sure someone convinces you that that car is safe to drive, so to speak.
And then from a training perspective, the ICT Standard has nothing to say about training.
[? Utgu ?] has another question.
Are there accredited trainers for the training requirements where trainings can be held by anyone who claims themselves as an expert? And I think you’re referring to, who can you go to get training? So I can summarize this for you, but ESDC is still working on providing a more precise guidance on what they have in mind regarding the quality of training.
They also make some educated guesses based on a financial analysis, as to how many people in your organization probably need the training, how many hours of training per person was required.
But there’s no stipulation in the Phase 1 regs that training must come from a certain source, or it must be by someone who has a certain accreditation.
Having said that, having trainers who have certifications, such as IAAP, is a really good way to know that the training you’re getting is high quality.
And Michelle [? Kuwan ?] is asking me to pull up the chart again on my screen so you can screencap it, I guess, my deadlines in as well.
Anyone who wants that slide, please email me at berman@davidberman.com.
Berman@davidberman.com, and we’ll answer every question you have.
Yvonne Terry has a question.
What is a compliant accessibility statement implementation look like? So, Yvonne, I’m referring to the accessibility statements that the Phase 1 regs call for, the regulation is very specific about what components an accessibility statement has to have.
And if you’d email me, I’ll provide you the formula that ESDC provides.
Or I also want to explain, and I’m just going to pull up a slide about this, that ESDC themselves, who have written these awesome regs, have guidance available to you.
So if the regulation itself, if the thing that appears in the Gazette is too lawyerly for you, there’s an excellent document called Guidance Overview of Regulatory Amendments, Digital Technologies Phase 1, and it summarizes in far plainer language than the legislation itself.
Of course, it’s never a replacement for the regs, but it really summarizes well.
And it actually touches on this.
And that’s available in both PDF format and HTML format.
I’m putting a picture up of that right now on my slide.
I’m going to repeat it again for anyone who’s searching for it.
It’s called the Guidance Overview Of Regulatory Amendments, Digital Technologies Phase 1.
I assure you though, if you Google Phase 1 regulations ACA, it’ll be one of the top three links you find.
So we’ve only got about a half a dozen questions left, so I figure we might as well address them all.
But for those of you who may need to bounce, I am going to just, I did promise to give you some next steps.
So I’ve got five top next steps, which I’m going to also, I’m bringing that up shortly.
So Christopher Billman asks, what makes a business federally regulated? Hm, that’s a great question.
So I’m going to give you a detailed answer to that.
Again, these are slides from our course on this.
So I’m showing a slide called Phase 1 regs.
What is a federally regulated private sector organization? And I’m saying private sector because if you’re government– if you’re federal government, you’re federal government.
However, so federally regulated private sector organizations are businesses or organizations in industries that are themselves regulated federally.
So for example, in banking, even if your largest– let’s say you’re TD Bank and your headquarters is on Bay Street in Toronto, you’re going to have obligations regarding your banking activities under federal law.
You’ve also got obligations in the retail level for your branches in Ontario.
You also have to conform to Ontario or Manitoba law for the interactions you have with individuals.
But for the actual banking stuff, you’re in a federally regulated industry.
And therefore, whether you’re a Canadian bank or a foreign bank in our space, that’s a strong group.
There’s also anyone involved in transportation, which crosses provincial borders or international borders, whether you be airlines or trucking companies, you’re also federally regulated, whether you’re transporting people or transporting wheat.
The telecommunications industry is federally regulated.
The broadcast industry is federally regulated.
There’s special resources like how wheat is handled, how uranium is handled.
Those industries are federally regulated, and therefore, any businesses in those individual ecosystems are also federally regulated.
I’ve got a question from Jason Belanger.
Can you confirm that the federal provincial territorial partnerships round upwards to the federal standard? Jason’s question, can you confirm that the federal provincial territorial partnerships round upwards to the federal standard? Jason, I don’t know, because I’m not quite sure I understand your question and I don’t want to give you an answer that’s incorrect.
Jason, could you email me that question? And we’ll get you we’ll get you the right answer.
Or you could also ask ESDC.
Michael Young– hey, Michael– says, hey, David, does EN 301 549 specify a standard for accessible PDF files? And then, Michael says UA, UA2, WTPDF.
And I’m going to just break that down in non-nerdy language.
Michael’s wondering, does the EN 301 549 specify a standard for accessible PDF? And the answer to that part of the question is yes, Michael, absolutely.
It specifies the same measuring stick that I’ve mentioned.
It mentions WCAG 2.1 AA, as well as those extra technical things in Clauses 5, 6, and 7, which possibly could affect PDF files.
Now, Michael’s also referring to other global standards for accessible PDF.
There’s one called PDF UA.
There’s the PDF, UA version 2.0 we’re working on.
I’m on the ISO committee for that.
But the bottom line is, Michael, no, EN 301 549 does not at all mention any other standard for PDF files except for WCAG 2.1 AA.
Even though PDF UA is a great way to measure the accessibility of files.
Kevin Shaw, could you explain timeouts on sites? Yes, this is, Kevin, from ESDC.
I can certainly explain timeouts on sites.
Yeah.
So in websites and web apps, we often have a situation where there’s a process going on, like you’re filling in a form, and you’re only given so many minutes to fill it out.
And so for example, in WCAG, there are allowances.
They’re allowed to only give you a certain amount of time, and some exceptions around this.
So typically, in the WCAG success criteria, which calls for timeouts, which is actually success criteria 2.2.1.
And you have the classic case of you’re booking a ticket on Air Canada’s website.
And normally, we would demand, so that everyone has enough time to get the form filled out, that you give people the ability to extend the amount of time they’re allowed, or simply give them lots of time in the first place.
And that makes sense, especially in the accessibility environment, because some people with cognitive differences need more time.
Some people using a certain assistive technologies need more time.
Some people for whom the language of the document is not the language that they grew up with need more time.
And so WCAG has a variety of ways, which we insist that you give people enough time to get things done.
But there are exceptions to that.
And one of the exceptions is, well, I’m sorry, but the nature of eBay or the nature of an airline booking site is you can’t sit on a ticket forever.
Someone else may want to buy it.
And so WCAG has this pragmatic balance where there are exemptions for timeouts.
Now, I think the reason Kevin’s bringing this up is the other reason we have these exemptions that come up is for security requirements.
So if you can now say, well, the website’s fundamental thing is to auction off things on eBay, or it’s trying to sell tickets to Ticketmaster, but one could also argue the essential goal of the website is to make sure someone doesn’t steal your identity, or that your taxes get filed right.
In which case, you could argue that the security provisions also make an argument that we can’t leave things open.
So the best practice is we inform people really, really well if there are any timeouts in advance so they can prepare themselves.
And then we work well to create a web experience which works for everyone.
However– and this is a deeper question.
And Kevin, I welcome you to call me directly on this one because it’s a fascinating topic and we’ve got some great use cases.
But essentially, sometimes people feel we can’t have security and accessibility.
I’m sorry, I should say we can’t have ICT Standard conformance as well as conformance to or compliance with various security regulations.
And I’m saying yes, we can.
And we’re going to find that balance every time.
So, there’s a question from Solomon, and this may be our last question.
No, second to last question, because Solomon’s question is a lot of words.
So I’m going to read it out right now.
So Solomon says, we’ve seen vendors’ VPATs, V-P-A-Ts done by a third party service provider, saying that the vendor’s product is accessible and meeting all the WCAG 2.1 requirements.
However, the actual product contains blocker accessibility issues.
In other words, accessibility issues that block the ability of people to use the product, such as keyboard and accessibility, unlabeled input fields.
These are examples I’m just paraphrasing.
Egregious failures of WCAG 2.1 AA.
What would you recommend in this situation where there is a serious discrepancy between the vendor’s perception of the accessibility of their product and our team’s evaluations seeing it being inaccessible? This has led to strong pushback from vendors and sticky conversations.
This vendor has a strong background with certificates and credentials.
This has led to many headaches and conversations.
So Solomon, I feel your pain because we also, we see this happening and it hurts.
Well-meaning people who think they know how to do conformance testing may not do it well enough, and they end up providing a declaration that something conforms when it really doesn’t.
But it sounds like, Solomon, you’re dealing with, not an edge case, but really egregious failures.
So my biggest recommendation is to urge your vendors to not write their own VPATs, but to hire people with IAAP WAS certification, because they wouldn’t have that certification if they didn’t know how to do conformance testing.
It’s like hiring someone to do law who’s not certified as a lawyer.
And if the legal answer you need isn’t that important to you, you don’t mind asking a random person or someone who feels like they understand the law.
I shouldn’t say a random person.
That’s one thing, but it’s really important to you, if it’s crucial that something be accessible, which in this case, it will be because of the regulations, then I recommend you make sure that the vendor does.
So Solomon, again, there’s also a grievance process for such matters.
So Solomon, if you want to contact us more directly and explain what could be confidential, which is what certifications they have or they claim to have, there are indexes where I can show you, how you can look up the certification and see if they’re the right certifications for the situation and all.
But it’s just like if you took your car into a safety inspection or garage and it passes, but then it clearly shouldn’t have passed.
It’s a situation where clearly the vendor, either unintentionally or otherwise, is making a claim that isn’t accurate.
So jeez, thanks for all the amazing questions, and I appreciate those who have stuck around for so much.
So I promised some few next steps and here they are.
I’ve got a slide up which has them, and this is just the beginning of the strategic process.
I’m going to mention some entity wide strategy steps for regulatory compliance that are sustainable.
So the first thing we recommend is, of course, you’re going to determine how the regs apply to you or how they apply to your customers.
The second thing is you’re going to take inventory of all your digital assets that are in scope.
What apps do we have? What digital documents do we have? What websites, both externally facing and internally facing, do we have? Our third step, which is right out of the government of Canada playbook is to reduce the ROT.
That is, if there was ever a good time to remove redundant or trivial or outdated, R-O-T, Redundant, Outdated, Trivial content from your products, now’s a great time, because that’s a good thing to do anyway.
And now, you have less stuff in scope, and so you have less stuff to potentially have to fix.
Now, then, my fourth point is that for everything that’s outsourced, you train your procurement teams to review their contract templates.
So when you hire, you make sure you’re downloading the responsibility for providing you products that meet the regulations and beyond right in your documents.
So if you’re in the situation, like Solomon was, where, oh no, I bought something, and even though they claim it complies, it doesn’t– it conforms, it doesn’t, well, Solomon can go right back to Solomon’s contract and say, well, it’s right there.
Clause 68 says all deliverables from this product that happen to be this or this or this, must conform to EN 301 549 or the ICT Standard.
And if they’re not, you may never get paid.
That’s what you do for everything outsourced.
And conveniently, these regs insist that we train our procurement people anyway.
And then, for those things you’re developing in-house, you just need to make sure your strategic plan includes an inclusive by default approach.
And what I mean by that is, if you wait till the product is completely created and then decide, oh yeah, let’s make it accessible, well, you couldn’t choose a more painful, more expensive, and least effective thing than to see accessibility as the last step.
Rather, we want you to do the opposite.
We want to build things in inclusive by default.
If someone’s writing an article in Word that’s going to be on your website, let’s give them an accessible template.
So we don’t even have to teach them how to make an accessible document.
We just teach them how not to break our template.
The benefit of building accessibility in every step of the way.
it means people of all abilities can also be involved.
So, for example, if there’s no alternative text on your photos until the last minute, well, that means someone who can’t perceive the photos can’t be part of the process.
Because they don’t know what’s in the photo because there’s no Alt text.
Whereas in that Word document, you decide, oh yeah, we’re going to include a photo of the minister.
You put the Alt text in right there, then whether a proofreader has typical vision or has a vision impairment, they can proofread the document and they can proofread the Alt text all at once.
Everything points towards a process where we build things accessible from step zero.
And also, bonus is we get a diversity of people involved in the projects, which means we know we get better design products when we include people of a diverse nature.
So then, we make sure that our plan includes that, and equipping people with the right tools that we’ve built in the plan for how we’re going to do auditing, remediating and testing.
It’s all part of the entire project plan when we create new things.
It’s actually a lot easier to learn accessibility on a new project than trying to fix an old one.
It’s like it’s easier to build accessible elevators in a brand new, shiny hospital than trying to figure out how to put elevators in a 100-year-old building.
So we’ve also, if you’re interested in more resources, at our wcag2.com site, we have a curated collection of resources at wcag2.com/library.
And if you go there, you can either find resources you need or you can suggest resources we should add.
And I already mentioned ESDC and the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which is responsible for investigating all the obligations under the law, also has material that they’re developing and have developed that’s going to help you succeed in complying with these regulations in a way that’s most effective.
And I got to say, I appreciate that, we’ve been going for a while, and I appreciate you sticking around.
And I want to say this.
There’s been perhaps– and I’ll leave you with this, because, I mean, we can teach you all the techniques.
We can help you through this whole process, which was strategy, training, auditing.
I mean, all that’s possible, but I want you to think that it’s been, perhaps, 7,500 generations of human beings.
And we happen to live in the first generation where it’s truly possible to make everything accessible, to include everyone.
In the three decades that have gone by since the government of Canada first published legislation, the first time on Earth that referenced WCAG, more people have been liberated through accessible digital technologies than all the wars in human history.
We get to be alive at this time, and we have the power to do this.
And whether you’re doing it because there’s a deadline or you’re doing it because it’s just better customer service, or you’re doing because it just feels good in your heart, I really appreciate you taking time, so much time out of your day to wrap your head around how we get this done together.
So thank you.
Thank you so much, so much for doing that.
And I also want to thank our– I want to thank our sponsors, 3Play Media and the Canadian Association of the Deaf.
I want to thank our sign language interpreters from Asign, who are just awesome.
I want to thank our captionist.
And I want to thank my team, who you’ve been interacting with, our producer Hannah, and our production team of Abhinav and Michael and Randy, who’s supporting us.
And all of the remarkable people on our team– about a dozen other people who have contributed to developing and proofreading and researching and getting this done right so we can share it with you.
So it’s a privilege to be in this position, to be able to share so much knowledge with you.
If there are more questions, I’ll stick around a little longer.
And again, I just want to thank you for being with us today and taking this so seriously.
We will be publishing a highlight reel of the– we will be publishing a short PowerPoint that has the highlight slides in it that I showed today that were most relevant.
We’ll also be working on the recording, a fully accessible recording that should be available within the next week or two.
And we’ll tell you all when it’s available.
Oh, there’s one more question from Margarita Felicio.
And her question is, or her statement is, Hi, David.
Is there any GAP report template that might be used as a guide? And I’m assuming, Margarita, that you’re referring to General Accounting Principles when you say a GAP report template? Maybe, Margarita, maybe you should email me that and the answer, and we’ll give you the answer to the question once I fully understand it.
And Crystal Jones asks, is it possible to do a presentation in layperson’s language? And I say, absolutely.
So we’ve worked on plain language standards as well for several years, and plain language has always been a fascination for me.
Some of these talks I give have been to people in other countries where English isn’t the first language or French isn’t the first language.
And we take great pride in the ability to unpack things in simplified language.
So all that to say, Crystal, is yes, we do have– when we do specific events for organizations, we take into account the abilities and knowledge of everyone involved.
So a webinar like this one’s tough because there are people in the audience who go 20 years deep with this, and there’s people who are new to it, and I’m trying to find that balance.
However, when we do a tailored webinar or a course or learning guide specifically for your organization, we thoroughly interview you and we discover the existing competency levels, the understanding levels, the language levels.
And then we make sure we present information in your language of choice, as well as at an understanding level which is appropriate.
We also take some pride in being able to break down the technical jargon and the industry speak.
Though I have to say, sometimes I’m as guilty as the next person in talking in what my team calls Berman speak.
So happy to help.
Just give us a chance.
Thank you, Crystal.
And I think that’s a wrap.
So thank you again so much.
And I will stand by as the sign language interpreters catch up with me.
I apologize for talking so fast, as I always get excited.
So thank you so much to our captionist and our ASL interpreters and our LSQ interpreters for putting up with my speed of speech, as well as my quite weak sign language.
Thank you all.