AODA Website Audit in Toronto: What a Real Audit Includes

Search for an AODA website audit in Toronto and you'll find three kinds of offer: instant online scanners, accessibility widget companies offering a "free compliance check", and large consultancies with long sales cycles. Very few of them will actually fix anything. Here's what a proper audit should include, so you can tell the difference before you spend a dollar.

6 things a real AODA website audit includes

1. Scope by template. Home, category, product, cart, checkout, account, search, contact, blog and forms. Pricing an audit by page count is a red flag; your 400 product pages share one template.
2. Two automated tools, not one. We use WAVE and axe, because each reports issues differently and together they make a stronger first pass.
3. Keyboard-only testing. Every menu, popup, filter and the full checkout, including the error states. This is where scanners go quiet and real users get stuck.
4. Screen reader testing. Headings, landmarks, link names, form labels and announcements, checked with an actual screen reader.
5. Zoom and mobile checks. 200% browser zoom without sideways scrolling, pinch-zoom on phones, and the menu and checkout on a small screen.
6. A written report you can use. Each issue tied to the WCAG rule behind it, ranked by impact, in plain English. Not a 90-page export of scanner output.

Red flags when comparing AODA audits

• "Free AODA compliance audit" with an instant result. That's an automated scan. Useful as a starting point, not as evidence.
• A certificate or badge. Ontario does not certify websites, and there is no official AODA certificate. Anyone selling one is selling decoration.
• An audit that ends with a list. Someone still has to fix it. If that's your developer, you're paying twice and the re-test often never happens.
• "Install our widget and you're covered." The U.S. Federal Trade Commission ordered accessiBe to pay $1 million over exactly that kind of claim. More on that here.

What a Toronto-based audit gets you

We're based in Toronto and work with organizations across the GTA and the rest of Ontario. That matters less for the testing, which is the same anywhere, and more for the context: the employee thresholds, the three-year reporting cycle, and what your compliance report actually asks you to confirm. If you have a deadline, we plan around it.

What it looks like in practice

On a recent AODA project for an industrial e-commerce site, we audited 11 templates. The most-visited category page went from 232 automated issues to zero, the homepage from 20 WAVE errors and roughly 108 contrast errors to zero, and the whole site was signed off 17 days after the first baseline scan. Every fix was made in the site's own templates and re-tested by keyboard and screen reader.

Audit only, or audit and fix?

You can buy either from us, but we recommend the second. An audit that hands you a list is half a job. Our standard engagement is one fixed price covering the audit, the code-level fixes and the re-test, with a sign-off report at the end you can keep on file. Here's what drives the cost.

This article is general information for Ontario organizations, not legal advice. For advice on your specific obligations, speak with a lawyer.