Is web accessibility in Quebec mandatory? For a government department or a public body, yes. For a private business, not in the sense of a technical standard to meet, at least not yet. The answer changes as soon as you have employees in Ontario or are federally regulated. And the absence of an obligation doesn’t make the people who can’t use your site disappear.
In Quebec, an obligation for the public sector
Government departments and public bodies covered by the act on the governance of information resources must apply Quebec’s web accessibility standard (SGQRI 008). Its version 3.0 has been in force since April 2024. It is based on WCAG 2.1, the international guidelines for accessible web content, with a few criteria from version 2.2, and generally targets level AA. It applies to new content from the design stage, and to existing content when it is significantly modified.
If your organization isn’t a public body, this standard doesn’t apply to you directly. It still concerns you if you design sites or content for one.
For private businesses, no standard, but the Charter
No Quebec law currently imposes a web accessibility standard on private businesses. The Charter of human rights and freedoms does, however, prohibit discrimination based on a handicap or on “the use of any means to palliate a handicap” (section 10), and refusing, through discrimination, to make a contract concerning goods or services offered to the public (section 12).
These sections don’t mention websites, and we don’t claim to know how a court would apply them to one. But an online store that a blind customer can’t use with a screen reader raises the same question as a shop with no access ramp. The Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse receives discrimination complaints.
In Ontario, the law covers businesses too
Ontario goes further. That is often where Quebec businesses get caught off guard. Under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (AODA), the public websites of designated public sector organizations and of businesses or non-profits with 50 or more employees have had to meet WCAG 2.0 level AA since January 1, 2021. Two criteria are excluded: live captions (1.2.4) and audio descriptions for pre-recorded video (1.2.5).
The obligation covers content published after 2012, and applies to the organization that controls the site, directly or through a contract. The 50-employee threshold is counted in Ontario, according to the regulation’s definition: a Quebec business with a large team in Toronto or Ottawa should therefore look into it closely.
At the federal level, a standard for large businesses
The Accessible Canada Act covers federally regulated organizations: banks, telecommunications, broadcasting, interprovincial transportation, federal departments and Crown corporations. Amendments to the Accessible Canada Regulations, registered in December 2025, require them to apply the CAN/ASC-EN 301 549 standard to their digital technologies. For the web, this standard incorporates WCAG 2.1 levels A and AA.
Large federally regulated private organizations, those with an average of 100 employees or more, have until December 5, 2028 for their public web pages and mobile apps. Some sectors, such as transportation and telecommunications, are exempt from certain requirements. If your business is in that situation, the countdown has started.
What level AA requires, in plain terms
WCAG groups its criteria under four principles: a site must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. Behind those words are very concrete requirements. Text must have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 with its background. Everything must work with the keyboard, and the active element must remain visible. Every form field has a label, every meaningful image a text alternative, every pre-recorded video captions. Text must be resizable up to 200% without anything getting lost.
Version 2.2 adds a few criteria designed for phones and for people who have trouble with a mouse: targets at least 24 pixels square, or spaced far enough apart, and an active element that is never entirely hidden by a sticky banner. None of this prevents a beautiful design. It only requires thinking about it before drawing it.
Why web accessibility in Quebec is worth it, obligation or not
In 2022, 21% of Quebecers aged 15 and over living in private households had a disability, according to Statistics Canada’s Canadian Survey on Disability. That is about 1.4 million people. Not all of them have trouble with a website, but some abandon a form they can’t fill in with the keyboard, or a page whose contrast is too low to read.
Accessibility also helps people with no disability at all: the person reading on their phone in full sunlight, the one who navigates with the keyboard out of habit, the one watching a video with the sound off. And an accessible site is, give or take, a well-structured site: headings in the right order, text alternatives, explicit links. Google reads that kind of site better.
Above all, doing it right from the design stage costs far less than fixing it afterwards. Colours chosen with the right contrast, a menu designed for the keyboard, forms with real labels cost almost nothing when they are planned. Catching up on a live site means reworking the design, the theme and sometimes the content.
Where to start
Start with a test you can run yourself, the same one as in our website launch checklist. Go through your site with the keyboard, no mouse, using the Tab key: can you always see where you are, and can you open the menu, fill in the form and send it? Then run your colours through a contrast checker, and see whether your important images have a text alternative that says what they show.
Next, set yourself a target level. For a business website, WCAG 2.2 level AA, the most recent version, is the reasonable reference: it covers what Ontario and the federal government require, and a little more. Finally, publish an accessibility statement that gives the target level, what has been done and what remains to be fixed, with a way to report a problem. Our accessibility statement can serve as an example.
Be wary of miracle solutions. A widget that adds an accessibility button in the corner of the screen doesn’t fix the site’s code: badly ordered headings, buttons with no name and forms with no labels are still there. Accessibility is handled in the design and in the theme.
If your site already exists, a website audit measures its accessibility along with its speed and security, then ranks the fixes by priority. And if a redesign is planned, that is the best time to build it in from the mockups.
