An AI tool didn’t exist when Ontario’s website accessibility regulation was written, and it doesn’t need to — the rule targets what’s published, not what produced it, and an AI-generated listing video or image is judged on exactly the same standard as anything a person made by hand.
Key takeaways
An agent using an AI tool to write listing copy, generate a virtual tour, or produce social video content is producing website content the same way a human-written page or a professionally shot video is website content. Ontario’s accessibility rules don’t ask how the material was made. They ask what it is — and video is video, an image is an image, regardless of what produced it.
The specific, numeric obligation comes from Ontario Regulation 191/11’s Information and Communications Standards. “As of January 1, 2021, the AODA requires you to make all public websites accessible if you are either: a designated public sector organization, or a business or non-profit organization with 50 or more employees…These requirements only apply to websites and web content published on a website after January 1, 2012.” The standard itself is WCAG 2.0, and the required conformance level is specific: “As outlined in the Information and Communications Standards (see sections 9–19) part of Ontario Regulation 191/11 under the AODA, your public website and web content posted after January 1, 2012, must meet the WCAG 2.0 Level AA success criteria, except for: 1.2.4 (live captions), 1.2.5 (pre-recorded audio descriptions).” A brokerage or team under 50 employees isn’t automatically exempt from every AODA obligation — smaller organizations “typically have lighter obligations, but ‘small’ does not always mean ‘exempt’ — some duties reach organizations of every size” — but the specific WCAG 2.0 Level AA website standard applies at the 50-employee threshold, or immediately for a designated public sector body.
It’s worth being precise about what “except for 1.2.4 and 1.2.5” actually means, because it’s a much narrower exception than agents sometimes assume. 1.2.4 covers live captions specifically — a live-streamed open house or a live video Q&A. 1.2.5 covers audio description for pre-recorded video specifically — a spoken narration track describing visual content for someone who can’t see it. Everything else in the Level A and Level AA success criteria still applies in full: text alternatives for non-text content (1.1.1), captions for pre-recorded video (1.2.2), keyboard accessibility, colour contrast, readable and predictable page structure, and more. An AI-generated listing video that has no captions at all doesn’t fall under either named exception — pre-recorded captioning is a Level A requirement that applies to it directly.
A listing video assembled by an AI video tool from property photos still needs captions if it carries spoken narration or on-screen text — the pre-recorded captioning requirement doesn’t ask who edited the footage. An AI-generated or AI-enhanced property image, posted to a public-facing website, still needs a meaningful text alternative for a screen reader, the same as a photograph a human took and uploaded manually. AI-written listing copy still has to sit inside a page structure a screen reader can navigate — headings, readable link text, logical order — regardless of which tool drafted the prose. None of this is a special AI rule. It’s the ordinary WCAG 2.0 Level AA standard, applied to content that happens to have been AI-assisted rather than hand-made.
Ontario’s real estate advertising rules follow an identical pattern — the obligation attaches to the content and the medium, not to how it was produced. RECO’s bulletin on online advertising is explicit that “Advertising requirements apply to websites and social media, just as they do with any other advertising medium,” requiring current, clear, and accurate information and prohibiting false, misleading, or deceptive content, regardless of the tool used to produce it. CREA’s own AI guidance reaches the same conclusion from the professional-standards side, naming Articles 13 and 15 of the REALTOR® Code — advertising content and accuracy, and advertising claims — as remaining fully applicable to AI-assisted material, with no separate, softer standard for anything AI touched. The same accountability logic applies directly to conversations, not only published content — see when a client quotes an AI answer at you.
A brokerage with 60 employees uses an AI tool to generate a short narrated video tour for a new listing and posts it to the brokerage’s public website. Because the brokerage crosses the 50-employee threshold, the video is subject to WCAG 2.0 Level AA under O. Reg. 191/11 — and because pre-recorded captioning (1.2.2) is not one of the two named exceptions, the video needs accurate captions of the narration before it goes live, the same as it would if a person had recorded the voiceover personally. Posting the AI-generated version without captions, on the theory that the accessibility rules were written before AI tools existed and therefore don’t contemplate them, isn’t a defensible reading of a regulation that is written around the content published, not the production method. For where an unreviewed AI output can go wrong before it’s even published, see what a hallucination in an AI draft actually is.
The specific WCAG 2.0 Level AA website standard applies at 50 or more employees, or immediately for a designated public sector body. That doesn’t make a smaller brokerage automatically exempt from every AODA obligation — treadstonelaw’s own guidance warns against assuming a small headcount means no duties at all — but the specific numeric website threshold is 50 employees.
Yes. The regulation regulates the published content and the organization publishing it — not the tool used to produce it. There is no AI-specific exception anywhere in O. Reg. 191/11’s Information and Communications Standards. For what an agent should never simply hand to an AI tool unchecked, see what you should never let AI do.
At minimum, accurate captions for any spoken narration or on-screen text, since pre-recorded captioning (success criterion 1.2.2) is a Level A requirement and is not one of the two named exceptions. Live captions and pre-recorded audio description are the only pieces the regulation excuses.
Ontario’s guidance describes the obligation as reaching public web content broadly, not a single homepage — individual listing pages, video content, and downloadable documents posted after January 1, 2012 are all in scope for an organization that meets the threshold, not just the site’s front page.
A short call is enough to check that material against the same accessibility standard everything else you publish has to meet.
