Digital accessibility consulting for Canadian nonprofits

Your doors are open.

Make sure

your website is too.

Web accessibility is the practice of designing and building websites so that everyone can use them, regardless of ability or circumstance. That includes people who navigate with a keyboard, use a screen reader, need high contrast, or find cluttered layouts hard to process. It also includes people on mobile devices, older adults with changing abilities, and anyone dealing with a temporary or situational limitation — a broken arm, lost glasses, or a bright screen on a sunny day.

The international standard puts it simply: everyone should be able to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the web. It's less about adding features and more about removing barriers that were baked in unintentionally.

WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which is an internationally recognized set of technical standards developed by the W3C, the organization that sets web standards broadly. "2.2" is the version, and "AA" refers to the middle of three conformance levels: A, AA, and AAA. Each level builds on the last, and AA is the one consistently referenced in legislation, funder requirements, and accessibility audits as the practical benchmark — comprehensive without being impractical.

I audit using WCAG 2.2 AA guidelines, which means I'm checking your site against the current standard — one that's backwards compatible with WCAG 2.1, so it satisfies the requirements of Canadian legislation and federal funding programs that still reference the earlier version.

Probably not directly — yet. The Accessible Canada Act applies to federally regulated organizations like banks, telecoms, and federal government bodies, not most nonprofits. British Columbia's Accessible BC Act currently covers public sector bodies and hasn't extended to nonprofits yet. If you operate in Ontario, the AODA does apply to you depending on your organization's size, and it has real compliance deadlines.

All of that said, WCAG 2.1 AA is Canada's recognized technical standard, funder expectations are shifting quickly, and the federal digital requirements are expanding. Waiting for a legal requirement to arrive isn't really the posture most mission-driven organizations want to be in anyway.

Almost certainly it has some. Automated scans of the top one million websites find that 95% have detectable accessibility errors, with nonprofit sites specifically clocking in even higher at 98%. Those figures only capture what automated tools can catch, which is about a quarter of what a full audit would reveal.

Yes! Whether you're on WordPress, Webflow, Squarespace, custom code, or whatever you're working with, I can work directly within your environment or tell you honestly if your platform of choice is restricting your accessibility. If you already have a developer, I'm happy to work alongside them in an advisory capacity — or handle the issues myself and provide detailed documentation after the fact explaining what was changed and why. Either way, nothing gets left as a mystery.

Not during an audit — I'm reviewing your site, not making changes to it. During remediation, there will be updates made to your site, but I work to minimize disruption and coordinate timing with you. Nothing gets changed without your knowing about it.

If you don't know what's wrong yet, an audit is the right first step as it gives you the full picture before deciding what to fix. If you've had an audit done (by myself or another organization), the Remediation Package may be the better fit. If your site is due for a redesign regardless, the Accessible Rebuild rolls accessibility in from the ground up, so you're not paying to fix something twice.

When in doubt, a no-commitment discovery call will help us figure it out together.

An audit report is yours to keep and act on whenever you're ready. A lot of organizations use the findings to plan for the next budget cycle or prioritize the most critical fixes first.

That said, audit findings do have a shelf life. Sites change, and after about 6 months the report may no longer reflect what's actually there. The same timeline applies to the audit credit: if you move forward with remediation or a rebuild within six months, the audit fee comes off the total. After that, we may need to re-evaluate where things stand. I'd rather you have accurate information and act when it makes sense than feel pushed. Be aware, however, that waiting too long can mean starting from scratch.

Not sure where to start? Reach out — no prep required, no commitment involved. A short conversation is often enough to figure out whether accessibility work makes sense for your organization right now, and what that might look like.