Accessibility, privacy and the legal pages

What you will be able to do

• Find and fix the most common accessibility problems on an event business website
• Write a plain-language privacy policy based on PIPEDA's principles
• Determine which AODA requirements apply to your business by its number of employees

Accessibility, privacy and legal pages sound like compliance chores, the pages you copy from a template and never read again. Treat them that way and you lose clients you never knew you had: the guest of honour’s grandmother who cannot read pale grey text, the corporate buyer whose procurement checklist asks for an accessibility statement, the couple who wonder what you will do with their details. Done properly, these pages are part of how your site earns trust.

Read the transcript

Accessibility, privacy and the legal pages.

Accessibility, privacy and legal pages sound like compliance chores, the pages you copy from a template and never read again.

Treat them that way and you lose clients you never knew you had: the guest of honour's grandmother who cannot read pale grey text, the corporate buyer whose procurement checklist asks for an accessibility statement, the couple who wonder what you will do with their details.

Accessibility is good marketing.

An accessible website is one that people with disabilities can use: people who are blind and use screen readers, people with low vision who zoom in, people who cannot use a mouse, people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, people with cognitive disabilities who need plain structure.

It also works better for everyone else: older relatives, people on small phones in bright sun, people watching video on transit with the sound off.

The fixes that matter most.

The international standard is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

You do not need to master it to fix the most common problems on event sites.

Worked example: Lantern and Lane's accessibility pass.

Priya spent one afternoon on a basic check.

She found three problems.

The privacy policy.

A privacy policy tells visitors what you collect, why, and what you do with it.

Write it in plain language about your actual practices, not a template written for a software company.

The other pages to have.

Terms of booking: a link to, or summary of, your client agreement, matching your price sheet and policies page.

Website terms of use: a short page on copyright in your content, photo credits and links to other sites.

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

Accessibility is good marketing

An accessible website is one that people with disabilities can use: people who are blind and use screen readers, people with low vision who zoom in, people who cannot use a mouse, people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, people with cognitive disabilities who need plain structure. It also works better for everyone else: older relatives, people on small phones in bright sun, people watching video on transit with the sound off.

Event clients include all of these people, and so do the guests they are planning for. A planner who cannot be contacted through an accessible website is unlikely to be trusted with an accessible event.

The fixes that matter most

The international standard is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). You do not need to master it to fix the most common problems on event sites.

Worked example: Lantern & Lane’s accessibility pass

Priya spent one afternoon on a basic check. She found three problems.

Contrast. The old site used the brand’s lantern gold, #D9A441, for all body text. It measured about 2.25 to 1 against the white background, far below 4.5 to 1. Contrast ratios compare the relative brightness of two colours: (lighter + 0.05) divided by (darker + 0.05). The gold has a relative luminance of about 0.417 and white is 1, so (1 + 0.05) divided by (0.417 + 0.05) is about 2.25. The brand guide’s bronze, #8A6A1F, has a luminance of about 0.158, which gives (1.05) divided by (0.208), about 5.05 to 1, which passes. They kept the gold for lines, icons and buttons on dark backgrounds, as the brand guide says, and moved body text to the bronze. You do not need to do this arithmetic by hand; free contrast checkers do it for you, but knowing what the number means helps you argue with a designer.

Alt text. Of 42 images, 30 had none and eight had file names as alt text. She wrote short descriptions for the 24 that carried meaning, such as “Two grandmothers laughing together at a wedding reception”, and marked the rest as decorative.

Keyboard. The “Check your date” button could not be reached with the Tab key because it was built as an image. The web designer replaced it with a real button in ten minutes.

The privacy policy

A privacy policy tells visitors what you collect, why, and what you do with it. Write it in plain language about your actual practices, not a template written for a software company. A workable outline:

1. Who we are and how to contact the person responsible for privacy.
2. What we collect: inquiry details, contract and payment information, event details, photos, and website analytics.
3. Why we collect it: to reply to inquiries, plan and deliver events, invoice, send newsletters to people who opted in, and improve the site.
4. Who we share it with: the service providers who host your site, send your email, process payments and store files, and other vendors on an event when the client asks you to coordinate them.
5. How long we keep it, and how we protect it.
6. Photos: how event photos are used in your marketing and how to ask for one to be removed.
7. Cookies and analytics: what tools you use and how to limit them.
8. Your choices: how to access or correct information, withdraw consent, unsubscribe and make a complaint.

Read your policy against your real habits. If it says you never share information with third parties but you send guest lists to the caterer and the venue, it is wrong, and a wrong privacy policy does more harm than none.

The other pages to have

• Terms of booking: a link to, or summary of, your client agreement, matching your price sheet and policies page.
• Website terms of use: a short page on copyright in your content, photo credits and links to other sites.
• Accessibility statement: what you have done, what you are still working on and how to ask for help.

An accessibility statement you can adapt: “We want everyone to be able to use this site and work with us. We have checked our pages for contrast, alt text, captions and keyboard access, and we review them twice a year. If anything is hard to use, or you would like information in another format, email or call us and we will help promptly, at no extra cost.”

Link all of these from the footer of every page, and put a date at the top of each so you know when it was last reviewed.

Accessibility in Ontario

The website rule. Under the AODA’s Information and Communications Standard, designated public sector organizations and businesses and non-profits with 50 or more employees in Ontario must make their public websites meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA. Since January 1, 2021, public websites, and web content published after January 1, 2012, must comply. Two success criteria are exempt: live captions and pre-recorded audio descriptions. Internal websites of private organizations do not have to meet Level A or AA. The rule covers sites an organization controls directly or through a contract, so a venue group that hires an agency is still responsible. Ontario’s guide explains how to make websites accessible.

Rules that apply to almost everyone. All organizations with one or more employees must meet the customer service standard. They must have accessible customer service policies, welcome service animals and support persons, allow assistive devices, give notice of temporary disruptions, provide accessible ways to give feedback, train employees and volunteers on accessible customer service and the Ontario Human Rights Code, and provide information in accessible formats on request, promptly and at no extra cost. Organizations with 50 or more employees must also document their policies and keep written training records. Organizations with 20 or more employees must file an accessibility compliance report every three years, and Ontario’s page says the deadline to file is December 31, 2026. Check the province’s accessibility rules for businesses and non-profits for your size.

Most event vendors have fewer than 50 employees, so the WCAG rule does not bind them. Their corporate, public sector and venue clients often are bound, and many apply the standard to their suppliers’ materials as well. Meeting WCAG 2.0 Level AA is a reasonable target for any business that sells to them.

Privacy in Canada

PIPEDA is the law for most Ontario businesses. It applies to private-sector organizations that collect, use or disclose personal information in the course of commercial activity, and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner says it generally applies to businesses in Ontario. Only Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec have general private-sector privacy laws deemed substantially similar; for Ontario, only the health information law, PHIPA, is listed. If you market to clients in those provinces, check their rules too.

PIPEDA rests on ten fair information principles: accountability, identifying purposes, consent, limiting collection, limiting use, disclosure and retention, accuracy, safeguards, openness, individual access, and challenging compliance. Your privacy policy is how you show openness. Your contact for privacy questions is how you show accountability. The access and correction section serves individual access. The OPC’s summary of PIPEDA is short and readable.

Cookies and scripts. CASL requires express consent before you install a computer program on someone’s device in the course of commercial activity, but the CRTC says cookies, HTML and JavaScript can be deemed consented to by the user’s conduct, under certain conditions. For a typical event business website using analytics and embedded video, the practical step is to say plainly in your privacy policy what tools you use and why. This is general information, not legal advice. If you handle sensitive information, run online payments yourself or sell into Quebec, speak with a privacy lawyer.

GTA practice notes

Corporate and public sector buyers in Toronto increasingly send vendor questionnaires that ask about accessibility, privacy and data storage before they approve a supplier. Keep short written answers ready: your accessibility statement, who holds your client data and where, how long you keep it and who to contact about it. A vendor who can answer in one email moves through procurement faster than one who has to find out.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet and complete it for your own business, using Lantern & Lane as the model where it helps. Keep it with your marketing plan. It takes about 10 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)