We want everyone who visits the Health Standards Organization (HSO) website to feel welcome and find the experience rewarding. HSO is committed to the goals set out in the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005, and its regulations. The Integrated Accessibility Standard Regulation calls for all new websites for organizations with more than 50 employees to comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 AA. The HSO website has been designed and tested to comply with this requirement.
What Are We Doing?
To help us make the HSO website a positive place for everyone and to be compliant with the Integrated Accessibility Standard Regulation of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005, we’ve been using the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 AA. These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities, and user friendly for everyone.
Accessibility Features
Our web site makes use of industry-standard techniques and best practices to provide the highest possible level of web site accessibility for our users, including:
Any information conveyed with colour is still readable if a user is unable to distinguish colour.
Images used on our website contain a textual description that will be read out loud within your screen reader.
All font sizes used on our website use relative units of measurement. This makes scaling the font-size of our web site easier and more consistent.
All webpages use headings to create a proper document structure. To cycle through the headings on any given web page, press the ‘Tab’ key on your keyboard. Cycle backwards through the headings by pressing the ‘Shift’ and letter ‘Tab’ keys together.
Accessibility Barriers
Some content is in PDF format only. We are working to reduce our use of PDFs and are publishing new PDFs to be accessible.
Due to conditions beyond our control, there are some instances where we are unable to provide information in an accessible format (for example, our location map, some RSS feeds, etc). We will introduce accessible solutions as they become available.
How Are We Doing?
We’ve worked hard on the HSO website and believe we’ve achieved our goal of Level AA accessibility.
We monitor the website regularly to maintain this, but if you do find any problems, please get in touch.
Let Us Know What You Think
If you enjoyed using the HSO website, or if you had trouble with any part of it, please get in touch.
Email us at Communications@healthstandards.org