Are you AODA Compliant?  The January 1, 2012 deadline has come and gone.

June 12, 2012, by HR à la carte | Work Environment and Policies

A few months ago I wrote a blog asking if you were ready for AODA compliance.  AODA stands for the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.  This Act ensures that Ontarians with disabilities have access to goods, services, facilities, accommodation, employment, building structures and premises by January 1, 2025. 

The first standard to come into effect was the Customer Service Standard.  The deadline for compliance was January 1, 2012.  If you have still not yet developed a policy or trained your employees on how to provide excellent customer service to people with disabilities, please see the requirements below in order to take steps toward compliance as quickly as possible.  Businesses with 20 or more employees have until December 31, 2012 to submit their progress report online to the government.

Penalty for Non-Compliance

The penalties for non-compliance range from as low as $200 to as high as $50,000 fines for individuals and $100,000 fines for corporations.

What do you need to do to become compliant?

If your business has less than 20 employees: 

• Create and institute an accessibility plan
• Train employees

If your business has 20+ employees:

• Create and institute an accessibility plan
• Train employees
• Publish the plan and make it accessible to customers in at least one alternative format, e.g. large print
• Report progress online - you have until December 31, 2012 to submit your report.

Need help?

HR à la carte has created an AODA Toolkit to help businesses quickly become compliant.  It includes a Customer Service Standard Policy vetted by employment lawyers, as well as Customer Service Standard Training, complete with facilitator’s notes.  Alternately, we have fully qualified facilitators who can train your employees as needed. 

Check out our other Free Resources for further information on AODA and what you need to do to become compliant before the December 31, 2012 reporting deadline, or the government website at www.accesson.ca .  For immediate help, please contact one of our HR professionals at 1-888-919-7422.