Canada’s National Observer published an op-ed about wildfires in July 2025 and something pinged. We’ve had some record breaking seasons in the past few years, with millions of hectares burning each year in Canada. But I didn’t have a great visual in my head about what “millions of hectares” meant. Or why “hectares” were the sweet unit of measurement for wildfires. Square metres is too small, especially for large wildfires (1 hectare is 10,000 square metres) and square kilometres (commonly used for land mass, 100 hectares is 1 square kilometre) is too big. I thought these facts and figures would make a great visualization about the meaning of a hectare. Compared to most countries on the planet, Canada is really big—but that doesn’t mean we should be nonchalant about the size of our wildfires. And I don’t think Canadians are, I just don’t think we know what “millions of hectares” of wildfires truly means.

The challenges I set myself were to use Canadian comparisons wherever possible and to make an accessible PDF.

It’s easy to use the White House or Buckingham Palace as commonly known buildings with relevant data is readily available online. Instead, I spent some time looking for Canadian examples, attempting to find landmarks to use from different provinces.

My accessibility goals weren’t just about passing AODA in Acrobat, but included adding clarifying text under graphics, in addition to the alt-text on images, paying close attention to typeface sizes when using colours other than black and carefully checking the foreground and background colour comparisons for designed objects.