Building inclusive communities: Accessibility tips for municipalities

Not everyone benefits equally from the digital experience. Individuals who rely on assistive technologies face barriers accessing nearly 90 per cent of public and commercial websites. Since approximately 15 per cent of the global population lives with a permanent disability, websites that fail to meet accessibility standards exclude a significant segment of the community.

For municipalities, making local services inclusive means ensuring all residents, especially those with disabilities, can easily access them. Digital accessibility and web accessibility are essential for municipal websites, online forms, and services.

Accessible content benefits everyone, including users with slow internet connections or older devices.

Fortunately, improving web accessibility is easy to achieve by understanding common barriers and implementing the right solutions.

Accessibility Laws in Canada

Municipalities in Canada must comply with both federal and provincial accessibility laws. Understanding these regulations helps municipalities plan effectively and avoid compliance issues.

1. Accessible Canada Act (ACA) – Federal

The ACA aims to make Canada barrier-free by 2040. It focuses on areas like employment, public services, information technology, communication, and transportation. While municipalities are mainly covered by provincial laws, aligning with ACA standards is encouraged, especially when federal funding is involved.

2. Provincial accessibility laws

Each province may have its own accessibility requirements. Here are two key examples:

• Ontario: Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) – The AODA is designed to make Ontario fully accessible by 2025. It covers areas like customer service, public spaces, employment, and web content. Municipalities must train staff, create accessible policies, and ensure websites meet standards such as WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines).
• Manitoba: Accessibility for Manitobans Act (AMA) – The AMA introduces rules to remove barriers in customer service, employment, communication, and built environments. Municipalities need to create policies, provide staff training, and involve people with disabilities when developing services, including digital services.

Improving Digital Accessibility

Enhancing digital accessibility and web accessibility improves the usability of municipal services, ensures legal compliance, and benefits all users, not just those with disabilities. The following are 10 tools for achieving digital accessibility.

Include captions and transcripts – All audio content, including sounds and background audio in videos, should be accessible to individuals with hearing impairments. This can be achieved by adding closed captions, offering sign language interpretation, or providing written transcripts to ensure full understanding. Captions should be included for both live and recorded videos, such as council meetings or announcements, which also benefits users who prefer reading over listening.

Use proper colour contrast – Proper colour contrast is essential because it affects how easily users can read content, especially those with visual impairments like colour blindness. Even users without disabilities may find low-contrast combinations, such as light grey text on a white background, difficult to read. Municipalities should aim for a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text. Online tools can help test a site’s contrast, and providing options for users to adjust page contrast further enhances accessibility.

Avoid flickering content – Flickering content is not only distracting and unpleasant for users, but it can also pose serious health risks, such as triggering seizures in individuals with certain disabilities. By avoiding any type of flickering elements on a site, municipalities create a safer and more focused experience that allows users to engage with content without unnecessary distractions.

Add image alt text – Add image alt text to provide meaningful descriptions of visual content, ensuring users with visual impairments or those using browsers that block images can understand it. Including relevant keywords in the alt text helps screen readers describe images accurately. Alt tags also improve SEO by helping search engines better interpret the page. For decorative images, use empty alt attributes or leave them out to avoid unnecessary distractions for assistive tools.

Make document accessible – Making accessible municipality documents is an essential part of making content accessible. Municipalities should ensure all PDFs, Word files, and forms are easy to read for people who use screen readers by using headings, real text, clear link names, and proper table structures.

Offer different CAPTCHA options – While CAPTCHA is effective for blocking spam form submissions, it can create barriers to accessibility because users must interpret complex or distorted visuals. A better approach is to use PHP scripts or backend logic to detect spam URLs or suspicious form behaviour. Another option is to configure forms with field validation rules. By checking that entries match certain expected parameters, municipalities can filter out spam without relying on visual challenges that may exclude some users.

Resizable text feature – Most browsers and devices let users resize text, helping those with visual impairments. However, if a site isn’t designed for this, resizing can disrupt its layout. Municipalities should test fonts by zooming in and out, and user scaling should never be disabled. Use relative units instead of fixed pixels so text adjusts smoothly across devices.

More time for data inputs – It’s useful to set a time limit for completing forms. However, not all users with disabilities may finish on time. To enhance web accessibility, municipalities should notify users about the time-out and offer an option to request additional time if needed.

Control over auto-playing content – Avoid auto-playing videos or audio on websites, as it can be distracting and overwhelming for many users. If carousels, slideshows, or video content are included, ensure there are clear controls for users to pause, stop, or play them as they choose. Giving users this control enhances web accessibility and creates a more user-friendly experience.

Use tables for tabular data – Use tables only for displaying organized data such as statistics, timetables, or comparisons. Avoid using them for page layouts, as this can make navigation difficult for screen readers and users with assistive technologies. For layouts, rely on clean and semantic HTML and CSS instead. This practice improves digital accessibility and ensures sites are both user-friendly and flexible across devices.

Ensure Digital Accessibility

By following these tips for municipalities on improving accessibility, municipal services become more user-friendly, legally compliant, and inclusive. Municipalities should begin by understanding applicable laws, then implement simple yet effective changes such as adding captions, alt text, accessible documents, and improved design practices.

Regularly soliciting feedback from people with disabilities and conducting ongoing reviews will help ensure digital services remain accessible to all.  MW

✯ Municipal World Executive and Essentials Plus Members: You might also be interested in Nicole Cooper and Marco Cheng-Perri’s article: Framework for digital transformation.

Vijayshree (VJ) Vethantham is senior vice president of growth and strategy, Continual Engine.

Related resource materials:

• Transforming municipalities
• Manitoba city launches on-demand transit pilot
• Pioneering accessibility through innovation and collaboration