Accessibility
Know Your Vote T.O. is meant to work for every Torontonian, including people using screen readers, keyboards, switch devices, magnification, and translation tools. We assess the site against recognized accessibility standards and publish our current status here. If anything on this site is hard for you to use, please contact us — reports directly shape what we fix next.
Current compliance status
- Standard we build to
- WCAG 2.2 Level AA
- Ontario (AODA) baseline
- Ontario's accessibility regulation (AODA, O. Reg. 191/11 s.14) references WCAG 2.0 Level AA, excluding live captions (1.2.4) and pre-recorded audio description (1.2.5).
- Last assessed
- August 14, 2026
- Status last updated
- August 28, 2026
Every issue identified in our last assessment has been remediated; a follow-up scan and a manual screen-reader session are the remaining steps before we claim full conformance. This report is our own engineering assessment, not a third-party certification.
| Area | WCAG criteria | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Text colour contrast | 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) — AA | Conformant (observed) | Fixed August 28, 2026: site-wide colour tokens now keep normal text at or above the 4.5:1 minimum on white and tinted surfaces. |
| Keyboard access to photo framing | 2.1.1 Keyboard — A | Conformant (observed) | Fixed August 28, 2026: labelled horizontal/vertical position sliders now provide a full keyboard equivalent to dragging. |
| Announcement of form errors and confirmations | 4.1.3 Status Messages — AA; 3.3.1 Error Identification — A | Conformant (observed) | Fixed August 28, 2026: sign-in and profile messages are announced (alert/status roles) and field errors are programmatically linked to their inputs. Screen-reader session to confirm. |
| Link purpose in internal management tables | 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context) — A | Conformant (observed) | Fixed August 28, 2026: every row action names its candidate (e.g. "Edit Jane Smith") and the candidate name is a row header. |
| Skip-to-content link | 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks — A | Conformant (observed) | Added August 28, 2026: a visible-on-focus "Skip to main content" link is the first focusable element on every page. |
| Images and text alternatives | 1.1.1 Non-text Content — A | Conformant (observed) | Candidate photos support administrator-managed alternative text; decorative images are marked as such, and the dashboard photo preview is exposed to assistive technology. |
| Page structure: headings, landmarks, titles | 1.3.1, 2.4.2, 2.4.6 — A/AA | Conformant (observed) | Sampled pages have one main landmark, a single H1, and descriptive titles. |
| Language of page and translations | 3.1.1 Language of Page — A | Conformant (observed) | Pages declare their language, and a translation tool is provided; automated translations are marked as potentially imperfect. |
| Form labels and instructions | 3.3.2 Labels or Instructions — A | Conformant (observed) | Sampled forms label their fields and state requirements up front. |
| Screen-reader verification (full workflows) | Multiple criteria | Needs verification | A manual assistive-technology session (VoiceOver/NVDA) across the candidate and voter workflows is required before full conformance can be claimed. |
How we assessed: 54 automated accessibility scans (axe) across 27 public, candidate, and publisher page states at desktop and mobile widths, plus source-code review. All issues found were remediated on August 28, 2026; a follow-up scan and an assistive-technology (screen reader) session are the remaining verification steps.