British Columbia Passed an Accessibility Act

What passed

Legislation establishing an accessibility framework for the province received royal assent in June.

It is framework legislation, which is a specific thing and the source of most of the confusion around it.

It sets up the structure through which accessibility standards will be developed, rather than setting out those standards itself.

So the correct answer to what does it require of my website is that the Act does not say, because the requirements come later through regulation.

What follows is a general description rather than legal advice. Whether and how any obligation applies to your organisation is a question for somebody qualified.

What framework legislation means

The pattern is common and worth understanding, since it recurs.

The Act creates the machinery: the ability to make standards, a committee structure to advise on them, and duties that will be placed on organisations named in future regulations.

The specific obligations, the sectors covered, and the timelines are then set out separately over the following years.

Which means the answer to what you must do changes as regulations are made, and the useful posture is to watch rather than to act on the Act alone.

It also means anybody telling you this month that your site must now meet a particular technical standard because of this legislation is ahead of what has actually been enacted.

Who it starts with

The initial focus is the provincial government and public sector organisations prescribed by regulation.

• The provincial government itself.
• Public sector bodies named in regulations.
• Duties around planning and receiving feedback.
• An advisory structure to develop standards.
• Private business, not directly, at this stage.

The fifth point is the one most small businesses want and is worth stating plainly rather than leaving ambiguous.

The duties it establishes

For the organisations it covers, the early obligations are procedural rather than technical.

Establishing an accessibility committee.

Producing and maintaining an accessibility plan.

Providing a way for the public to give feedback on barriers, and considering what comes back.

None of those is a website specification. They are the mechanism through which barriers get identified and addressed, and a website is one of the places barriers show up.

That distinction matters, because it explains why the practical effect on suppliers arrives through procurement rather than through a technical rule appearing overnight.

What it does not do this month

Worth listing, because several claims are circulating.

It does not require private businesses to make their websites meet a particular standard.

It does not create an immediate compliance deadline for small firms.

It does not adopt a specific technical standard by name in the Act itself.

And it does not make an accessibility statement or an overlay mandatory, whatever any supplier suggests this month.

If you receive a message this week saying your business is now legally required to buy something, that is a sales approach rather than a legal position.

A worked example

A small firm received an email the week the legislation passed, stating that provincial law now required their site to meet a named technical standard and offering a subscription product to achieve it.

The claim was not supported by what had been enacted.

Their own position was straightforward: they were a private business with no public sector contracts, and no new obligation had landed on them that week.

What they did do was worth doing anyway. They spent an afternoon on image descriptions, form labels, and contrast, and wrote a short honest accessibility statement.

That cost nothing, improved the site for real users, and put them in a better position for the point at which requirements do reach further.

They did not buy the subscription.

Where this genuinely lands sooner

The practical near-term effect is on organisations that sell to the public sector.

A body with a duty to identify and remove barriers will increasingly ask its suppliers to deliver things that do not create new ones, and that arrives through tender documents and contract terms rather than through legislation directly.

For a web supplier, a print supplier, or anybody providing systems or documents to a public body, that is a real and reasonably fast consequence.

It is worth being ready to answer a procurement question about accessibility with a specific standard and a testing approach rather than with the word yes.

That is the subject worth spending time on this month, and it is covered separately.

The broader picture

This is one piece of a wider pattern rather than an isolated event.

Federal legislation already applies to federally regulated organisations, and at least one other province has had web accessibility requirements in force for some time with staged deadlines.

The direction across jurisdictions is consistent: public sector first, then larger organisations, then broader application, over a period of years.

A business that treats accessibility as a slow-moving obligation to get ahead of, rather than an emergency or a non-issue, will be in the right position at each stage without ever having to act urgently.

The counter-case

Reading all this as nothing to do yet would be the wrong conclusion.

The obligations will widen, on a timetable that is not yet published, and the businesses that suffer are the ones that do nothing until a deadline is imminent and then pay to retrofit under pressure.

There is also a straightforward argument that has nothing to do with legislation: a meaningful proportion of your customers have some form of impairment, and a site they cannot use is business you are not getting.

The five common failures are cheap to fix, permanent, and improve the site for everybody. Doing them now because they are sensible is better than doing them later because you have to.

What to do this month

1. Do not buy anything on the strength of this week's emails.
2. Establish whether you supply any public sector body.
3. If you do, expect procurement questions and prepare an answer.
4. Fix the five common failures regardless.
5. Write an honest accessibility statement.
6. Watch for regulations rather than acting on the Act alone.
7. Ask a qualified advisor if you think you are covered.

Step one prevents most of the money that will be spent badly this month.

Writing the statement is covered in an accessibility statement for a small site.

Frequently asked questions

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