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Accessibility

When a fire department publishes a permit service, the accessibility obligation is the department’s, not its vendor’s. This page is what you need in order to answer for it: the standard we build to, what has actually been tested and with what, what is still open, and how a resident who hits a barrier reaches a person.

Last updated 26 August 2026

The standard we build to

FirePermit.Online is built to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA. That is one standard for every department we serve, in either country. We are not maintaining a compliant version and a convenient one.

United States — the Department of Justice rule under ADA Title II requires WCAG 2.1 Level AA for state and local government web content. In April 2026 the compliance dates were extended to 26 April 2027 for entities serving 50,000 or more people, and 26 April 2028 for smaller entities and special districts. An independent fire district is generally a special district, which puts it on the later date.
Ontario — the Integrated Accessibility Standards Regulation (O. Reg. 191/11) section 14 requires designated public sector organisations, municipalities included, to meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA. It has applied since 1 January 2021, and WCAG 2.1 AA contains all of it.
Elsewhere in Canada — provincial accessibility legislation in British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador is converging on the same WCAG levels on its own timeline. Building to 2.1 AA keeps you ahead of each of them.

The point worth carrying into a council or board report: these rules reach web content a public body controls through a contractual relationship, not merely content it wrote itself. A hosted resident portal published under your department’s name is that content. Procuring it does not move the obligation to the vendor — which is why accessibility belongs in the evaluation rather than in a remediation project after it.

Section 508 and federal funding
Where a purchase is made with federal funds or by a federal agency, Section 508 applies and is satisfied by the same WCAG 2.0/2.1 Level AA target. A conformance report in the standard ACR format is available for that paperwork.

What has actually been tested

We would rather give you a narrow claim you can rely on than a broad one you cannot. We test with open tools, we test on every release, and we publish what the tests say — including the parts that fail. This is the current state.

Conformance claim
Partial conformance with WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Known exceptions are listed below.
Last assessment
26 August 2026.
Scope assessed
The public marketing site, the blog, the legal pages, and the resident permit application flow.
Method
Automated rule testing with axe-core against the rendered pages, plus manual keyboard review. Both are open tools you can run against our site yourself, which is the point — nothing here rests on a report only we can see.
Frequency
Every release. The automated check runs as part of the build and a violation stops the deployment, so a regression cannot reach your residents while waiting to be noticed.
Independent audit
None. We assess our own work with open tools and publish the results rather than buy a certificate. You should weigh that accordingly — it is a real limitation, and it is why the known issues below are listed rather than summarised.
Limits of the method
Automated rules catch roughly a third of WCAG issues. Screen-reader testing has not been carried out, so this is a floor rather than a ceiling and we do not claim otherwise.
Conformance report
A written accessibility conformance report for the version you are evaluating is available on request, and can be attached to a council report or an RFP response.

How the product is built

These are commitments in the code, not aspirations. Each one is checked when a page changes.

Text meets a 4.5:1 contrast minimum against its background, and large text 3:1. The muted grey used for captions was darkened in August 2026 after measurement showed it at 4.03:1.
Every page is operable by keyboard alone, with a visible focus ring on every interactive element and a “skip to content” link ahead of the navigation.
Pages use real landmarks and a heading order that does not skip levels, so a screen reader can navigate by structure rather than by reading everything.
Meaning is never carried by colour alone. A burn ban is a word, not a red box.
Animation honours the operating system’s reduced-motion setting — the hero sequence stops for anyone who has asked their machine to stop moving things.
Images that carry information have text alternatives; images that are decoration are hidden from assistive technology instead of being described.
Form fields have real labels and hints, and errors are announced in text next to the field they belong to.

Known issues

Listing these is the point of the page. A vendor with no known issues has not looked.

The live burn map is an embedded third-party map component and has not been assessed to Level AA. Every permit shown on it is also available as a text list, which is the accessible path through the same information.
No screen-reader testing has been performed. Pages use real landmarks, labelled controls and a heading order that does not skip levels, all of which a screen reader depends on — but nobody has yet sat down with one and worked through a permit application end to end.
Automated testing covers the marketing site, the blog, the legal pages and the resident application flow. The administrative side, which department staff use rather than residents, is not yet in the automated set.

Feedback and accessible formats

Ontario’s accessibility standards require a process for receiving feedback and for providing information in an accessible format on request. This is ours, and your residents may use it directly — they do not have to go through your office first.

Report a barrier
Email info@firepermit.online with the page and what went wrong. Feedback can be given by email, by phone, or in writing, whichever suits.
Accessible formats
Any information on this site is available in an accessible format or with communication support on request, at no additional cost.
Response time
Two business days to a person, not an acknowledgement robot. If the barrier stops someone getting a permit, tell us that in the first line and we will treat it as urgent.

A resident who cannot use the online form is never out of options: the department can enter a permit on their behalf from the admin side, which is the same record by a different route.

Something here not answered?

Send the questionnaire, the by-law, or the question. A person answers it — we would rather write the answer down once than have you guess at it.

info@firepermit.online · Procurement pack