Ontario Reformats Its Electronic Laws Site
Ontario’s e-laws site has been reformatted to conform with the general provincial presentation standards – without changing the integrity of the content.
The new version of e-Laws has several improvements, including:
• Easier navigation between related documents (e.g. statutes and regulations, consolidated law and source law, current versions and previous versions)
• A cleaner look and feel
• Quick and easy search and browse functions for each law category, (e.g., current consolidated law, source law, repealed and revoked law, and law in force at particular times)
• Simplified “Help” information
• More accessible for more people, including those who use screen readers
There will be no disruption in service and new laws will still be posted within two days. Any links or bookmarks you have for e-Laws will still work.
A more detailed description of the differences in the new site is here.
The new e-Laws site is a travesty. In the process of revamping or refreshing this site (along with all of the .gov.on.ca Ministry sites), the government has dumbed-down their web presence to the point where their new sites look vacant. That look seems justified, as huge swaths of information seem to have been removed completely from dozens of government sites. The old e-Laws site was, arguably, THE best legislative website anywhere, but now its lacking the reference materials (detailed legislative tables, in particular) that made the site so much more than just a place to get consolidated law. We can only hope that CanLII picks up the missing pieces so users can by-pass e-Laws for most research tasks.
Also, the main text box on the homepage is a listing of most recent legislation. Who is this aimed at? What researcher, professional or novice, is interested in seeing materials listed like that? I would be curious to know what focus groups were convened for this revamp.
Overall, this direction for the Ontario government’s web presence is disappointing and mystifying.
I completely agree with Greg. The new e-Laws interface is NOT easier to use. It is in fact more difficult both to read and to navigate. In particular, having both the statute and its regulations on the same page is not helpful, especially when there are a large number of regulations, as with the Insurance Act or the Highway Traffic Act. Also, the larger typeface actually makes the page more cluttered and difficult to read. E-laws has ‘fixed’ something that was not broken.
Agree with Greg and Victor, the new e-Laws site is botched. Try to look at (not to say print) the child support tables O. Reg. 391/97 .
At first I thought the problem was with my narrow browsing window. I expanded it full screen and instead of displaying the full table, it is white left and right and the tables are capped.
CanLII displays the complete tables.