This site exists to make Ontario Small Claims Court easier to understand for people who have never been involved in a court case before — and that goal falls flat if the site itself is hard to use. Accessibility is something we actively design for, not an afterthought.
Our commitment
We aim to make this site usable by as many people as possible, including people who use assistive technology such as screen readers, people who navigate primarily by keyboard, and people with low vision or other visual, motor, or cognitive differences.
Standards we aim for
We build toward the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as a general standard, and we're mindful of Ontario's Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) and its web accessibility requirements. We haven't obtained formal third-party certification of compliance, and we treat this as a genuine, ongoing effort rather than a box we've checked once and moved on from.
What we've built into this site
- A "skip to main content" link at the top of every page for keyboard users.
- Semantic HTML headings and landmarks intended to work cleanly with screen readers.
- Labelled form fields throughout, including the search, newsletter, and consultation request forms.
- A main navigation menu, including its dropdown, built to be operable by keyboard alone and to expose its open/closed state to assistive technology.
- Colour choices intended to maintain reasonable contrast between text and its background.
- A responsive layout intended to remain usable at a wide range of screen sizes and zoom levels.
A note on embedded tools
The interactive calculators and wizards under Calculators and Legal Wizards are embedded from Lexscale.ai and run inside an embedded frame on the page. Their accessibility is managed by Lexscale.ai rather than by us directly — if you encounter a barrier specifically within one of these embedded tools, we're glad to pass that feedback along, but the fix itself depends on Lexscale.ai.
Known limitations
We're not aware of every barrier that might exist on this site — accessibility is something we improve continuously rather than something we can claim to have perfected. If something on this site doesn't work well for you, we'd genuinely like to know, using the form below.
Reporting an accessibility barrier
If you encounter a barrier using this site, please tell us — including the page you were on, what you were trying to do, and what happened — so we can look into it. Use the Contact form to reach us. We'll do our best to respond and address genuine barriers as quickly as we reasonably can.
This is ongoing work
As this site continues to grow, we review new pages and features against the same accessibility standards described above. If you're a regular visitor and notice things improving — or slipping — over time, that feedback is genuinely useful too.