Report-ready data
Evidence your plan team can quote
Per-page scan results, date-stamped and exportable as PDFs. Plan owners can pull barrier-removal evidence and progress numbers without going back to engineering.
Exportable PDF evidence
A11y Pulse for Accessible Canada Act
Accessible Canada Act compliance,
evidenced between filings, not just at them.
The Accessible Canada Act requires federally regulated organisations
and the Government of Canada to publish accessibility plans on a
three-year cycle, with progress reports in the in-between years.
Most plans cite WCAG 2.1 AA as the practical bar for the web content
piece. A11y Pulse runs daily WCAG 2.1 AA scans across every page on
your site so the evidence behind your plan and progress reports
keeps building, instead of being assembled in a sprint before each
filing.
What is Accessible Canada Act compliance?
The Accessible Canada Act (S.C. 2019, c. 10) requires federally regulated organisations and the Government of Canada to identify, remove, and prevent accessibility barriers, including in their digital services. Each entity in scope publishes an accessibility plan, follows up with progress reports in the in-between years, and refreshes the plan on a three-year cycle. The first plans were due by 1 June 2023, putting the next plan refresh on or before 1 June 2026.
The Act itself doesn't prescribe a specific web standard, but most ACA accessibility plans align with WCAG 2.1 Level AA in practice. It's the bar federal web teams and contractors tend to use, the standard cited in the Government of Canada's own Standard on Web Accessibility, and the standard A11y Pulse scans against by default.
Enforcement sits with the Accessibility Commissioner under the Canadian Human Rights Commission. The Commissioner can issue compliance orders, conduct inspections, and impose administrative monetary penalties of up to $250,000 per violation. Plans and progress reports are public documents, so they're scrutinised by advocacy groups and the Canadian disability community alongside the Commissioner's office.
The ACA is a federal statute covering federal jurisdiction only. Provincially regulated organisations sit under separate regimes that have grown up over the past two decades: the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), the Accessibility for Manitobans Act, Nova Scotia's Accessibility Act, and British Columbia's Accessible BC Act. Most of these point at WCAG 2.0 or 2.1 AA for the web content piece, so the same A11y Pulse scan history supports a provincial filing as well as a federal one.
Scope Federal jurisdiction
Federally regulated private sector (banking, telecoms,
interprovincial transport), Crown corporations, the
Government of Canada, and Parliamentary entities.
Standard WCAG 2.1 Level AA in practice
The Act doesn't prescribe a specific web standard, but WCAG
2.1 AA is the practical bar across most ACA plans and the
federal government's own web teams.
Next deadline Plan refresh due 1 June 2026
Federally regulated organisations that published their first
plan in 2023 are due to publish a refreshed accessibility
plan by 1 June 2026. Progress reports fall in the in-between
years.
Why teams switch to A11y Pulse
Built for ACA plans and progress reports
Filing a plan or progress report is easier when you can point at a continuous record of what's been scanned, what's been fixed, and what's still in progress.
WCAG 2.1 AA scanning
The bar your plan points at
A11y Pulse scans against WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the practical bar that most accessibility plans across the ACA cohort align with. Daily scanning across every page catches the issues a one-off sample audit misses.
WCAG 2.1 AA by default
Between filings
Catch regressions in 24 hours
A barrier can creep back in months before your next plan refresh — Slack and Microsoft Teams alerts surface it while the change is still fresh in the commit log.
Slack and Teams alerts
Side by side
Continuous monitoring vs scheduled audits
Two ways to gather evidence for an ACA plan or progress report. A11y Pulse is built for the continuous one.
Coverage
Cost shape
Regression detection
Fix guidance
Setup
Standards
Evidence trail
A11y Pulse Continuous, site-wide
Recommended Daily, every page
From $19 / month Published, no contract
Alerts within 24 hours
Per-issue, in-product, plain English
Five minutes, self-serve
WCAG 2.1 AA, WCAG 2.2 Plus 9 other global standards
Daily scan history, exportable
Scheduled audit Snapshot in time
For comparison Sample of pages, once per cycle
$10k+ per engagement Scheduled, one-off
Found at next audit
PDF report your team interprets
Procurement and scheduling
Whatever the engagement scopes
Single dated PDF
Where we fit
Built for federally regulated orgs and Crown corporations
A11y Pulse runs axe-core daily across your full sitemap, including authenticated and JavaScript-rendered pages. Findings come with the WCAG criterion, element selector, screenshot, and plain-English remediation guidance. Exportable PDF reports give your accessibility plan owners report-ready evidence on demand.
- Daily axe-core scans across your full sitemap
- Scripted coverage for authenticated and multi-step flows
- Plain-English fix guidance with WCAG references and element selectors
- Slack, Microsoft Teams, and email regression alerts
- Exportable PDF reports for accessibility plans and progress reports
Walk into your ACA plan refresh with evidence
30-day free trial, no credit card, no demo. Set up in about five
minutes.
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