Web Development Company in Ottawa

An Ottawa web quote is really a question about which rulebook applies. A bilingual departmental microsite built on Drupal-WxT or GCWeb answers to full CLF compliance, Official Languages Act parity, and WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility certification. A larger consultation or program portal adds custom workflows, ATIP-aligned audit logs, and an Adobe Analytics rollout. Private-sector Kanata North marketing sites on Next.js or Shopify Plus answer to none of it. Scope drivers include page count, integrations, and ABM tooling. Ottawa rates sit between Toronto and Edmonton because federal procurement overhead is real but the talent pool is wide. Codazz quotes fixed fee, with bilingual review and accessibility audit included rather than priced as a change order.

The Canada.ca Look and Feel is the Treasury Board mandated design system for the Government of Canada web presence, implemented through the GCWeb theme and the Web Experience Toolkit (WET, now WxT for Drupal). Any .gc.ca site, departmental web property, or federally-funded public service tool is expected to conform. CLF covers global navigation, the Canada wordmark, search behaviour, breadcrumbs, contextual help, and footer structure, and it is bilingual by default. We build Drupal-WxT and headless front-ends that conform without modification and pass Privy Council Office and PSPC review. For private-sector clients receiving federal funding (ISED grants, ACOA, Western Diversification successors) we advise on whether CLF or a lighter Government of Canada brand alignment applies.

Yes — every federal and federally-funded Ottawa site we ship is bilingual by design, not bilingual as an afterthought. Content models support parallel English and French nodes from day one, URLs follow Treasury Board patterns (/en/ and /fr/), language toggles meet Official Languages Act simultaneity requirements, and translation memory integrates with the Translation Bureau or a private LSP using XLIFF or TMX exchange. We work with internal terminology committees on departmental glossaries and run quality reviews against Termium Plus before launch. For private-sector clients in Ottawa-Gatineau (the National Capital Region) we deliver bilingual sites even when not legally required, because Gatineau audiences and federal partners expect it.

The Treasury Board Standard on Web Accessibility requires WCAG 2.1 AA conformance across all Government of Canada websites and web applications, and the Accessible Canada Act extends similar expectations across federally regulated sectors. Our delivery includes automated axe-core and Pa11y CI gates in every pull request, manual screen reader testing with JAWS and NVDA, keyboard-only navigation audits, and a final certification report mapped clause-by-clause to WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria. For Drupal-WxT sites we inherit WET's accessibility patterns and audit any custom blocks. For Next.js builds we use Radix or React Aria primitives and audit interactive components against ARIA Authoring Practices. The certification report is suitable for inclusion in procurement and ATIP responses.

Workloads with federal data sensitivity sit in AWS ca-central-1 (Montreal) or Azure Canada Central (Toronto), both of which hold Protected B equivalent assessments under the GoC Cloud Brokering Service framework. We follow ITSG-33 control selection for the relevant security category, configure logging into the customer's tenancy for ATIP and audit, and apply CSE-approved cryptography on data in transit and at rest. For non-classified marketing sites we use Vercel or Cloudflare Pages with Canadian edge nodes plus Canadian-region origin storage. AWS GovCloud is not available in Canada — the equivalent control posture is achieved via ca-central-1 with the right control set, not by chasing a US sovereign region.

Yes. We have shipped against PSPC standing offers and supply arrangements as a subcontractor and can produce the documentation a prime needs for ProServices, TBIPS, and SBIPS submissions — corporate profile, security clearance posture (Reliability and Secret cleared personnel available through partner staffing), past performance references, and bilingual delivery proof. For direct departmental work under the $40,000 contracting authority threshold or via task authorisations on existing vehicles, we move fast on fixed-fee statements of work. Larger competitive procurements typically need a Canadian-headquartered prime, and we partner with established Ottawa primes (Calian-adjacent suppliers, Macadamian-style boutiques) rather than overstating in-house capability on the bid response.

Drupal 10 with the WxT distribution is the default for Government of Canada public-facing sites because it ships GCWeb theming, bilingual workflows, and accessibility patterns out of the box and is already accepted by departmental web operations teams. For Crown corporations and federally-funded organisations with more brand latitude we build headless WordPress or Sanity with a Next.js front-end, which gives the editorial flexibility marketing teams want without losing the bilingual and accessibility posture. For Kanata North private-sector clients we lean on Next.js with Sanity or Contentful, sometimes Shopify Plus for the commerce layer. We avoid recommending bespoke CMS builds in Ottawa — the federal review process is hard enough on a known platform.

A bilingual departmental microsite on Drupal-WxT or GCWeb typically takes fourteen to twenty-two weeks. Weeks 1 to 4 cover discovery, Privacy Impact Assessment scoping, content inventory, and Official Languages Act planning. Weeks 5 to 14 cover design, GCWeb theming, bilingual content authoring, and accessibility-first component development. Weeks 15 to 18 cover content migration, French translation review against Termium Plus, and full WCAG 2.1 AA audit. Weeks 19 to 22 cover staging, ATIP-readiness review, security assessment, and production launch on AWS ca-central-1 or Azure Canada Central. Kanata North private-sector Next.js builds compress to eight to fourteen weeks because federal review steps drop out, though bilingual delivery often stays in scope.