A lot of Hamilton's bigger employers are business-to-business: manufacturers and metal fabricators, logistics and distribution, engineering and construction firms, plus a growing base of healthcare providers, professional practices and non-profits. If you have 50 or more employees in Ontario, your public website and anything you posted after January 1, 2012 have needed to meet WCAG 2.0 AA since January 1, 2021. That's the December 2008 version of the guidelines the province wrote into law, not the newer 2.1 or 2.2. A plain product-and-contact site still counts — the rule doesn't care whether you sell to consumers or to other businesses, and it covers sites you run directly or through a contractor.

Every municipality is a public body under the regulation, so the City of Hamilton and its HSR transit service carry the WCAG 2.0 AA duty with no size limit at all. So do the city's anchor institutions — the public and Catholic school boards, the local hospitals, McMaster University and Mohawk College. Public bodies also report on a two-year cycle, and the most recent deadline, December 31, 2025, has already passed. Ontario.ca asks anyone who missed it to file anyway.

Hamilton businesses and non-profits with 20 or more employees file an accessibility compliance report by December 31, 2026. Between 20 and 49 staff, that report is about customer service, not your website; at 50 and up, the website duty is part of what you're signing off on. Filing is a legal obligation, and Ontario says missing it may lead to potential enforcement action — so it's worth knowing which side of that line you're on before the form lands, and whether your site would back up what you're about to sign.

Here's the honest part: Ontario's own 2023 review of the AODA found there is no meaningful enforcement of the law. No one is auditing Hamilton websites door to door, and we won't pretend a fine is coming for you tomorrow. The statutory maximums are real — on a conviction, up to $100,000 a day for a corporation — but those are ceilings written into the statute, not everyday practice. So the reasons to fix your site are more practical than fear: the December 2026 reporting deadline, public and government buyers, the risk of a complaint or a lawsuit, and customers who simply can't use your site.

In a city built around big public buyers, the real pressure usually shows up in procurement. The hospitals, the colleges and universities, and the City are all obligated public bodies, and that duty tends to flow downhill: when you bid to supply, service or partner with them, accessibility questions land in the paperwork. A vendor who can hand over a clean scan report answers them in a sentence; one who can't spends a week scrambling. If any part of your pipeline touches Hamilton's healthcare, education or public sector, treat your website as part of the bid.

Before you call a consultant — Toronto firms quote CAD $2,400 to $25,000 for a one-time audit — find out where you actually stand. The free scan checks your site against WCAG 2.0 AA, catches the machine-detectable problems (about 57% of issues by volume, Deque 2021), and tells you honestly how much is left for a human to review. Ten minutes, no account.