Accessibility Statement83 days. Then a name goes on a form in Ontario — and it is not the company's name, it is a person's.
That is the part of the 31 December 2026 deadline nobody explains. The AODA compliance report is certified in the portal by a senior officer of the organization. A human being, who states that the answers are true. On conviction the ceiling is $100,000 a day for the corporation and $50,000 a day for a director or officer, personally.
Now you understand why the file has been sitting there since spring.
Three situations. One of them is yours.
A) Marketing commissioned the site, so everyone assumes it belongs to Marketing.
B) IT maintains the site, so everyone assumes it belongs to IT.
C) Legal was asked once, said "check with IT", and nobody went back.
Three people, one obligation, no owner. And a document with no owner never gets signed.
What unlocks it is not pressure, it is evidence. Before anyone signs, put the document behind each answer on the table. With 20 to 49 employees in Ontario that is your written policy, your training records and your feedback log. At 50 or more it also includes the multi-year plan and a WCAG 2.0 AA test of the public site. Nobody signs a sentence they cannot check. Show them the paper behind each yes and a meeting that has dragged on for a month finishes in ten minutes.
Write A, B or C below. I reply to every single one, personally, and I tell you who in your structure should realistically be holding the pen.
Then send this to the person who built your website. They almost always know who has been avoiding the question.
