Methodology
Which municipalities are included
The league includes Alberta municipalities whose communities have 1,000 or more residents — as defined by Statistics Canada's 2021 Census population centres (an area of at least 1,000 people with a density of at least 400 per km²). Where a population centre is a hamlet within a county or municipal district, the responsible municipality is the county, and its website is the one tested. Inclusion is rule-based: no municipality is added or omitted by choice. The list will be refreshed when 2026 Census population counts are published.
What we test
Each municipality's public website is crawled and tested with axe-core, the industry-standard open-source accessibility engine, against WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA rules (including W3C ACT rules). We test a standardized sample of pages — up to 100 pages for ranking scans, and full-site coverage where noted — discovered by following the site's own internal links, the same way a resident browses.
Every site is tested with identical tools, identical rules, and a deliberately gentle crawl rate designed to be indistinguishable from light human browsing. We respect technical barriers: if a site's security system blocks our testing, we stop and list the site as insufficient data — we never publish a score from an incomplete or unreliable sample, and we never attempt to work around a block.
How the score works
The health score (0–100) reflects the number and severity of WCAG 2.2 A/AA issues detected per page, averaged across all pages tested. Because it is a per-page average, scores are comparable between sites tested with different sample sizes. Issues inside embedded third-party content (for example a video player) are reported but excluded from the score, since they are typically outside the municipality's direct control. AAA and best-practice observations are reported for information only and never affect the score.
What the score is not
Automated tools can verify roughly a third of WCAG 2.2 success criteria — the machine-checkable subset. A score of 100 therefore does not mean a site conforms to WCAG, and a lower score is not a determination that a municipality fails any legal obligation. Full conformance evaluation requires manual expert testing. The scores published here are the opinion of Bayhan Technologies Inc., produced by our software using the methodology on this page.
Corrections, retests and opt-out
We believe a public index carries public obligations. Any listed municipality may, at no cost:
- Request the complete automated findings behind its result — page-by-page, issue-by-issue;
- Dispute a result — we will verify, and correct promptly and visibly if we got it wrong;
- Request a retest after making fixes — rankings are refreshed monthly, and we will retest sooner on request;
- Opt out — we will remove the listing.
Contact: selim.bayhan@civicpermit.solutions.
Why we publish this
Municipal websites are essential infrastructure: property taxes, recreation registration, emergency information. Roughly one in five Canadians lives with a disability, and machine-detectable barriers are the easiest ones to find and fix. This index exists to celebrate the municipalities doing well and to give every council a free, concrete starting point. Bayhan Technologies sells accessibility assessment services; this index is free, and no municipality is ever required to engage us to be listed, corrected, retested or removed.