Industry ReportCanadaMarch 22, 2026

The State of Web Accessibility Compliance in Canada 2026

We scanned 2,022 Canadian websites across 22 sectors and scored each against 9 WCAG accessibility criteria. 50.7% fail. The average score is 53.9 out of 100. Canada has two major accessibility laws approaching key deadlines: the Accessible Canada Act (ACA) for federally regulated organizations, and the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) for Ontario businesses with 50+ employees.

n = 2,022 sites|22 sectors|15 provinces/territories|9 violation categories

The Big Picture

2,022

Canadian websites scanned

50.7%

Overall fail rate

37.4%

Have critical violations

53.9

Average score (of 100)

Sectors analyzed

4.1%

Perfect score (100)

The majority of Canadian websites fail basic WCAG compliance. The median score is 65, and only 4.1% scored a perfect 100. With the ACA progress report deadline in June 2026 and AODA reporting due December 2026, organizations face real regulatory pressure to close these gaps.

The Canadian Regulatory Landscape

Canada has two primary accessibility laws that apply to websites. The Accessible Canada Act (ACA) covers federally regulated organizations (banks, telecoms, airlines, railways, Crown corporations) and references CAN/ASC EN 301 549:2024, which maps to WCAG 2.1 AA. The AODA applies to organizations with 50+ employees operating in Ontario and requires WCAG 2.0 AA. Additional provincial laws exist in Manitoba, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Quebec, and Newfoundland, though most are still developing web-specific standards.

Accessible Canada Act (ACA)

Jurisdiction: Federal (banks, telecoms, airlines, Crown corps)
Standard: WCAG 2.1 AA via CAN/ASC EN 301 549:2024
Penalty: Up to CAD $250,000 per violation
Next deadline: June 1, 2026 (progress reports)
Enforced by: Accessibility Commissioner (CHRC)

Source: Accessible Canada Act, S.C. 2019, c. 10

AODA (Ontario)

Jurisdiction: Ontario (50+ employees, public + private)
Standard: WCAG 2.0 Level AA
Penalty: Up to CAD $100,000 per day (corporations)
Deadline: December 31, 2026 (compliance reporting)
Enforced by: Accessibility Directorate of Ontario

Source: S.O. 2005, c. 11

ACA vs AODA vs Other Provincial

Compliance comparison by regulatory framework

ACA (Federally Regulated)

385 sites

Fail rate: 49.9%

AODA (Ontario)

240 sites

Fail rate: 45%

Other Provincial

1397 sites

Fail rate: 52%

Cross-Sector Comparison

Compliance varies widely across Canadian sectors. Federal government websites, which face ACA requirements, score 71.8 on average. Banks and telecoms, also ACA-regulated, average 47.8 and 39.3 respectively.

Average Score by Sector

2022 sites across 22 Canadian sectors, sorted worst to best

Below 40 (high risk)40-59 (moderate)60+ (better)

Sector	Sites	Avg Score	Median	Fail Rate	Regulation
Telecoms & Media	97	39.3	35	69.1%	ACA
Nonprofit	90	43.8	47.5	65.6%	AODA/Provincial
Legal	68	46	60	57.4%	AODA/Provincial
Banks & Finance	96	47.8	60	61.5%	ACA
Cultural	81	48.3	60	63%	Unknown
Energy & Resources	59	48.6	50	55.9%	ACA
K-12 Education	98	49.9	60	56.1%	AODA/Provincial
Professional	93	50.5	60	58.1%	Unknown
Healthcare	119	51	60	53.8%	AODA/Provincial
Businesses Expanded	153	51.2	60	54.9%	Unknown
Hospitals Expanded	30	52.3	60	53.3%	Unknown
School Boards	53	53.3	60	58.5%	Unknown
Universities & Colleges	126	53.4	65	52.4%	AODA/Provincial
Retail & Restaurants	102	53.4	60	52.9%	AODA
Provincial Government	136	56.7	75	41.2%	AODA/Provincial
Businesses	29	56.9	75	44.8%	Unknown
Colleges	45	57.7	80	37.8%	Unknown
Municipal Government	119	58.7	75	46.2%	AODA/Provincial
Utilities	66	59.4	62.5	51.5%	Unknown
Small Cities	188	61.3	75	38.3%	Unknown
Government	41	66.5	75	34.1%	Unknown
Federal Government	133	71.8	90	24.8%	ACA

Compliance Deadlines

Two major compliance deadlines are approaching. The ACA requires federally regulated organizations to submit progress reports by June 1, 2026. The AODA requires Ontario organizations with 50+ employees to file accessibility compliance reports by December 31, 2026. Across 385 ACA-regulated sites we scanned, 192 are currently failing.

ACA Deadline: June 1, 2026

Accessible Canada Act progress reports due

Days

Hours

Min

Sec

Deadline has passed

192

sites failing

49.9%

fail rate

54.1

avg score

Source: Accessible Canada Act (S.C. 2019, c. 10), Accessibility Regulations (SOR/2021-241)

AODA Reporting: Dec 31, 2026

AODA compliance reporting deadline

Days

Hours

Min

Sec

Deadline has passed

sites failing

38.4%

fail rate

64.5

avg score

Source: Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (S.O. 2005, c. 11)

Methodology

Scanning method:Sites were scanned using OnePageAudit's regex-based HTML analysis engine (not axe-core or any browser-based auditing tool). The scanner fetches raw HTML and checks for 9 WCAG-aligned accessibility criteria:

Missing lang attribute on <html>
Images without alt text
Missing <title> element
Missing viewport meta tag
Empty links (no accessible text)
Unlabeled form inputs
Missing skip navigation link
Missing or broken heading structure (no H1)
Autoplaying media elements

Scoring: Each criterion is weighted. Scores range from 0 (all violations present) to 100 (no violations detected). The pass threshold is 70. Scores reflect detectable HTML-level violations only. Manual testing, color contrast, and dynamic content analysis were not performed.

Statistical methods: Standard deviation, quartile analysis, Jaccard similarity for co-occurrence, k-means clustering (silhouette score 0.435), and multivariate linear regression (R2 = 0.383).

Canadian legal context: All regulatory citations reference official Canadian legislation. AODA penalties from S.O. 2005, c. 11. ACA penalties from S.C. 2019, c. 10 and SOR/2021-241. Provincial law references from individual provincial statutes.

Limitations: Regex-based analysis catches fewer issues than browser-based tools. The 9 rules cover a subset of WCAG 2.1 AA criteria. Results represent a point-in-time snapshot. Province detection uses URL patterns and may misclassify some sites. Small sample sizes for some provinces and sectors should be treated as directional.

Sources

Accessible Canada Act (ACA)Federal accessibility law, penalty structure, reporting deadlines

Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA)Ontario accessibility law, WCAG 2.0 AA requirement, CAD $100K/day penalty

Accessible British Columbia ActBC provincial accessibility legislation

Accessibility for Manitobans ActManitoba accessibility legislation, CAD $250K penalty

CAN/ASC - EN 301 549:2024Canadian ICT accessibility standard referencing WCAG 2.1 AA

Canadian Human Rights CommissionACA enforcement body, compliance monitoring

Sector Deep Dives

Each sector has a distinct compliance profile. Federal government and healthcare tend to perform better due to existing regulatory requirements. Retail and restaurant sites, many of which face AODA obligations in Ontario, show higher failure rates.

Sector Deep Dives

39.3

avg score

median

69.1%

fail rate

57.7%

critical violations

37.7

standard deviation

30.9%

passing rate

Regulation

ACA

Score position (0-100)

pass

Violation Patterns

Violations do not appear in isolation. The top co-occurring pair appears on 93 sites (Jaccard 0.564). These pairs represent systemic gaps in Canadian web development practices, not one-off omissions.

Violation Co-occurrence Matrix

How often violations appear together on the same site (n=2,022)

Diagonal = sites with that individual violation. Off-diagonal = shared count.

	Lang attr	Image alt	Doc title	Viewport	Link name	Form labels	Skip nav	H1 heading	Autoplay
Lang attr	141	30	64	93	20	24	139	86	3
Image alt	30	608	4	24	270	307	491	18	58
Doc title	64	4	74	60	2	0	74	70	0
Viewport	93	24	60	117	11	14	117	80	0
Link name	20	270	2	11	693	339	520	11	54
Form labels	24	307	0	14	339	782	578	6	59
Skip nav	139	491	74	117	520	578	1623	152	119
H1 heading	86	18	70	80	11	6	152	152	1
Autoplay	3	58	0	0	54	59	119	1	150

LowHigh co-occurrenceIndividual frequency (diagonal)

Top Co-occurring Violation Pairs

Ranked by Jaccard similarity (intersection / union).

Violation 1	Violation 2	Co-occurrences	Jaccard
Lang attr	Viewport	93	0.564
Doc title	Viewport	60	0.458
Doc title	H1 heading	70	0.449
Lang attr	Doc title	64	0.424
Viewport	H1 heading	80	0.423
Lang attr	H1 heading	86	0.415
Form labels	Skip nav	578	0.316
Link name	Form labels	339	0.298
Link name	Skip nav	520	0.290
Image alt	Form labels	307	0.283

Violation Clusters

K-means clustering grouped the 2,022 Canadian sites by violation profile. The resulting clusters reveal distinct compliance archetypes across Canadian organizations.

Violation Clusters (k-means)

Sites grouped by violation patterns. Bubble size = number of sites.

339

Link Name + Label + Bypass

Avg score: 19.6 | 339 sites

Link name: 100%Form labels: 100%Skip nav: 72.3%

Small Cities: 29Businesses Expanded: 27Nonprofit: 25K-12 Education: 22Retail & Restaurants: 21

443

Label + Bypass + Image Alt

Avg score: 36 | 443 sites

Form labels: 100%Skip nav: 75.2%Image alt: 36.3%

Small Cities: 45Provincial Gov't: 29Telecoms & Media: 28Legal: 28Cultural: 27

353

Link Name + Bypass + Image Alt

Avg score: 47.8 | 353 sites

Link name: 100%Skip nav: 77.6%Image alt: 35.1%

Small Cities: 41Municipal Gov't: 33Universities: 28Provincial Gov't: 26Healthcare: 21

Bypass + Html Has Lang + Page Has Heading One

Avg score: 62.8 | 97 sites

Skip nav: 100%Lang attr: 96.9%H1 heading: 91.8%

Businesses Expanded: 18Cultural: 11Professional: 10Banks & Finance: 7Small Cities: 6

707

Bypass + Image Alt

Avg score: 77.9 | 707 sites

Skip nav: 95.3%Image alt: 24.5%

Federal Gov't: 90Businesses Expanded: 64Small Cities: 60Retail & Restaurants: 48Municipal Gov't: 46

Province & Territory Breakdown

Ontario has the most comprehensive accessibility law (AODA), but compliance rates vary across the province. British Columbia, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia have enacted their own accessibility legislation. Federal government sites are counted separately.

Province/Territory Breakdown

Click column headers to sort. Provinces with accessibility laws carry higher compliance obligations.

Province/Territory	Sites v	Avg Score	Fail Rate	Provincial Law
Other/Unknown	1320	52.2	53.7%	None
Federal	149	69.7	26.8%	None
Ontario	146	64.5	38.4%	AODA
British Columbia	101	50.2	53.5%	Accessible British Columbia Act
Quebec	75	52.5	48%	Standards for government websites (SGQRI 008)
Alberta	74	49.9	59.5%	None
Manitoba	36	43.3	69.4%	Accessibility for Manitobans Act
Saskatchewan	27	51.5	51.9%	None
New Brunswick	23	48.9	52.2%	None
Nova Scotia	21	66.9	28.6%	Accessibility Act (Nova Scotia)
Newfoundland & Labrador	19	48.9	52.6%	Accessibility Act (Newfoundland)
Prince Edward Island	12	69.6	25%	None
Northwest Territories	11	21.4	81.8%	None
Yukon	5	3	100%	None
Nunavut	3	0	100%	None

Sources: Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (S.O. 2005, c. 11). Accessible Canada Act (S.C. 2019, c. 10). Individual provincial accessibility statutes.

What Predicts Accessibility Scores?

A multivariate linear regression model explains 38.3% of the variance in accessibility scores across Canadian websites. The strongest predictors are the sector type and the number of violation types present.

Predictive Model: What Drives Accessibility Scores?

Multivariate linear regression (n=2,022)

38.3%

variance explained (R2)

93.2

baseline score (intercept)

features tested

Per violation

-18.31

Legal

-10.19

Canada_healthcare

-10.01

Has overlay

-9.72

Federal Gov't

+8.55

Telecoms & Media

-6.55

Canada_business

+6.03

Canada_government

+5.89

Hospitals Expanded

+5.87

Nonprofit

-5.87

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