ACCS announces certification capability for Canada’s age verification standard

The UK-based Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS) has announced it can now certify age verification and estimation technologies against Canada’s national standard for age assurance.

Canada’s national standards body DGSI approved the CAN/DGSI 127:2025 standard in August, and published it just days ago. Adding Canada’s standard to its certification services portfolio gives the ACCS “a complete global certification pathway across the UK, EU, Canada, and beyond,” the organization says.

The ACCS released the comprehensive final report from Australia’s Age Assurance Technology Trial on Sunday.

The 18-page document on Canada’s standard specifies seven different methods of performing age checks: self-declaration; document-based age verification; “biometric and characteristic based verification;” capacity testing; federation from other accounts or platforms; profiling, which is an inference (or “prediction”) based on behavior analysis; and authorized confirmation, such as by a parent or recognized professional.

ACCS Digital Marketing Assistant Lily Edwards notes in a LinkedIn post that the national standard aligns with ISO/IEC 27566 and IEEE 2089.1, with tailoring for Canadian law and privacy frameworks. It also specifically references the Pan-Canadian Trust Framework (PCTF) as a normative reference.

The standard stipulates that relying parties must perform comprehensive privacy impact assessments when deploying age assurance technologies, including a Child Rights Impact Assessment (CRIA) as defined by UNICEF. They are also required to consider the accuracy of the technology they use, the appropriate level of confidence, and to offer users multiple options.

Acceptable age assurance technologies must align with Privacy by Design and Privacy by Default, proportionality and data minimization principles. If they use AI, the relying party must tell the user. The standard also sets requirements for minimizing data storage and ensuring it is secure if required.

The standard will be subject to a technical committee review within two years.

Article Topics

Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS)  |  age verification  |  biometric age estimation  |  biometrics  |  CAN/DGSI 127  |  Canada  |  certification  |  standards