Law firms and legal practices

People usually find a lawyer at a stressful moment: a separation, an injury, a will, a dispute with an employer or a charge. Before they ever speak to anyone, they read practice-area pages to see whether the firm handles their kind of matter, download a guide to understand the process, and fill in a consultation request or intake questionnaire. If those steps cannot be completed with a keyboard, a screen reader or a magnified screen, a prospective client may not be able to explain their situation privately, and may have to ask a family member to type sensitive details for them.

About 27% of Canadians aged 15 and over reported one or more disabilities in 2022 (Statistics Canada, Canadian Survey on Disability 2022). For a legal practice, an accessible website is part of being reachable by the people who need advice.

Where websites in this sector usually fail

The patterns below come up often on law firm websites. They are typical issues, not findings about any particular firm.

What the regulation requires

Under the Accessible Information and Communication Standard Regulation, Man. Reg. 47/2022, organizations with one or more employees in Manitoba have been covered since May 1, 2025. Web content must meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA if it was published on or after that date or is needed to access the organization's goods or services (s. 7(1) (opens in a new tab)). Consultation forms, intake questionnaires and payment pages are a direct route to a firm's services. A client portal published or significantly updated after the applicable date is also addressed as a web application (s. 8(1) (opens in a new tab)).

Client portals and payment processing are often supplied by a vendor. Where the firm has no direct control, the exceptions in s. 7(2) (opens in a new tab) may be relevant, but they are narrow, and clients should still have a workable alternative, such as paying by phone or receiving documents by email.

• Notice of accessible formats (s. 5 (opens in a new tab)). Clients should know they can ask for retainer agreements, guides and correspondence in a format that works for them, and for communication supports such as email instead of phone.
• Feedback process (s. 9 (opens in a new tab)). There should be an accessible way to tell the firm about barriers.
• Training (s. 4 (opens in a new tab)). Reception and intake staff, lawyers who publish articles, and whoever maintains the website or buys practice software fall within the training requirement. Large employers must also document a training policy (s. 4(4) (opens in a new tab)).

What we test first

1. Finding the right practice area and lawyer
2. Requesting a consultation
3. Completing an intake questionnaire, including long free-text answers
4. Downloading and reading a legal guide
5. Signing in to the client portal and opening a document
6. Paying a retainer or invoice online

Each journey is tested with keyboard only, NVDA on Windows, VoiceOver on macOS and iOS, text resized to 200% and content reflowed at 320 CSS px, in addition to automated scans. See our method.

Fixing without a redesign

A firm's website is part of its professional image, and remediation should not change that. We repair form labels, error messages, link text, PDF tagging and contrast with the least visible change, so the site still looks like yours. We never install overlay widgets, and if anything we repaired is later found not to meet WCAG 2.1 AA, we correct it at no charge.

Read about our services, see a sample report, or contact us for a fixed written quote after an audit. You can also call (431) 816-6210 or email [email protected].

Last reviewed October 2026. General information, not legal advice.