European Accessibility Act website requirements in Germany: who is actually covered, and who is paying for nothing

§01Who has to make a website accessible, and who does not

You are under a duty if you supply one of the services the law lists exhaustively to consumers. For websites only one of those categories matters: services in electronic commerce. And it is narrowly defined. What counts is the conclusion of a consumer contract, not the mere existence of a website.

Number 5 is the category almost every website case falls into. It means telemedia services supplied through websites or mobile applications, electronically and at the individual request of a consumer, with a view to concluding a consumer contract. Three distinctions follow from that one clause.

First: only towards consumers

Under § 2 BFSG a consumer is only a natural person who buys or receives for predominantly private purposes. The Bundesfachstelle Barrierefreiheit, the federal accessibility agency, states the consequence for sales portals without ambiguity: if they are not aimed at concluding a consumer contract, they do not fall within the scope of the BFSG.

A pure B2B shop is therefore outside. So is an intranet, because no service is supplied on the market there.

Second: a contract has to be concluded electronically

A website on which you cannot conclude anything, with services, team, references and a phone number, does not meet the element. This is not a question of interpretation: the explanatory memorandum to the bill says so in as many words. Covered are “only the websites or the mobile applications of service providers … through which offers are presented to consumers and bookings and payments can be made” (Bundestag printed paper 19/28653, page 65). Both have to come together, not one of the two.

The research service of the Bundestag reached the same result in 2025 and put it even more directly: “Purely informational websites with contact details clearly fall outside the scope of application.” One note on how much weight that carries, because it belongs to the matter: in that paper the sentence rests on a private information page, not on an authority. The load-bearing source is therefore the explanatory memorandum. The research service confirms it, it does not replace it.

As soon as there is an appointment booking, an order form or another route to a contract, the classification tips over, and it then covers the whole website or app, not only the ordering path. An online shop also falls under the BFSG when it sells exclusively products that are not themselves covered by the law: the point of connection is the service, not the goods.

Third: the micro-enterprise exemption, the most common mistake

§ 3(3) BFSG exempts micro-enterprises that supply services. No more and no less. The Bundesfachstelle makes it explicit: micro-enterprises that place products on the market do fall under the BFSG.

And the threshold itself is shortened almost everywhere. The wording in § 2 BFSG: an enterprise that employs fewer than ten people and that either has an annual turnover of no more than €2 million or an annual balance sheet total of no more than €2 million.

Headcount and financial figure are joined by “and”, the two financial figures are joined by “or”. If you employ twelve people you are not a micro-enterprise, whatever your turnover.

§02What “accessible” means in law

Accessible means, under § 3(1) BFSG: findable, reachable and usable for people with disabilities in the customary way, without particular difficulty and in principle without outside help. That is a statement of objective, not a technical benchmark. The concrete requirements sit in the accompanying regulation.

The BFSGV entered into force on 28 June 2025 (§ 22 BFSGV). In § 12(3) and § 19 it expressly requires digital information as well as websites and mobile applications to be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. Anyone who knows those four words will recognise them: they are the four principles of the WCAG, here in the text of a German regulation.

For electronic commerce, § 19 BFSGV is added on top. It requires in as many words that “information on the accessibility of the products for sale and of the services offered is provided, in so far as that information is made available by the responsible economic operator”, and that identification, authentication, security and payment functions are accessible.

§03EAA, BFSG, BFSGV, EN 301 549, WCAG, BITV 2.0: what really applies

Two documents are binding for you: the BFSG and the BFSGV. The European Accessibility Act stands behind both, but as a directive it is addressed to the Member States, not to your company. Everything else works indirectly or not at all. BITV 2.0 applies to public bodies and has nothing to do with a private online shop. WCAG and EN 301 549 are technical standards, useful but not German statutes.

The mechanism behind this sits in § 4 BFSG: whoever complies with harmonised standards whose references are published in the Official Journal of the European Union is presumed to meet the requirements. And it is exactly at this point that the position in August 2026 is unclear.

EN 301 549 was drawn up on the basis of standardisation request C(2022) 6456 final of 14 September 2022 as one voluntary route to meeting Directive (EU) 2019/882. The published version V3.2.1 dates from March 2021 and refers to WCAG 2.1 level AA; a final draft V4.1.0 of June 2026 is with ETSI and moves to WCAG 2.2 level AA.

Whether the version published today already produces a presumption of conformity for the BFSG is doubtful. The European Commission lists EN 301 549 in its own overview of harmonised standards exclusively under the Web Accessibility Directive (EU) 2016/2102, through Implementing Decision (EU) 2018/2048 of 20 December 2018, amended on 11 August 2021. A reference under Directive (EU) 2019/882 is not there. The specialist literature argues both ways all the same. We mark this as an open legal question and do not resolve it.

In practice it makes no difference: the duty follows directly from § 3 BFSG and §§ 12, 19 BFSGV, and the presumption would only ease the burden of proof. Anyone working to EN 301 549 and WCAG level AA is on the safe side under either reading, which is why that is our working benchmark.

§04The checklist: what your website has to meet

This list is ordered by the four principles of the BFSGV, not by effort. It does not replace an audit. It shows where the most frequent breaches sit.

Perceivable

1. Every image that carries information has an alternative text; decorative images are marked as decorative.
2. Contrasts meet the minimum values, on form borders, icons and error messages as well.
3. Videos have captions, audio content has a transcript.
4. Information is never carried by colour alone.
5. The page stays usable at 200 per cent zoom, without horizontal scrolling.

Operable

1. The whole page can be operated without a mouse, including the menu, filters, modal windows and the cookie dialogue.
2. The keyboard focus is visible at all times and trapped nowhere.
3. There is a skip link to the main content.
4. Motion that starts automatically can be stopped, and prefers-reduced-motion is respected.
5. Time limits in forms and baskets can be extended or switched off.

Understandable

1. The page language is set in the HTML, and passages in other languages are marked up.
2. Form fields have visible, associated labels: placeholder text is not enough.
3. Error messages name the field and the cause in plain words and stand next to the field.
4. Navigation and labels stay consistent across all pages.

Robust, and required by law

1. Semantic HTML instead of nested containers, with an unbroken heading hierarchy.
2. Interactive elements report their state to assistive technology.
3. The content is present in the source code without JavaScript. What a screen reader cannot find does not exist, and the same holds for AI systems, see llms.txt and AI visibility.
4. Information on accessibility under § 14 BFSG is published.
5. Identification, sign-in, security checks and the payment process are accessible (§ 19 nos. 2, 3 BFSGV).

§05How do I test my website for accessibility?

A complete test has three parts, and only the first can be automated. Everything that concerns meaning has to be judged by a person.

1. 01AutomatedRun a testing tool across every page type: home page, category, detail page, form, checkout, error page.
2. 02Manual, with the keyboardPut the mouse away and buy something in your own shop, using only Tab, the arrow keys and Enter. Most operators do not get as far as the checkout.
3. 03With assistive technologyThe same path with a screen reader. This is where wrong heading hierarchies and unlabelled elements come out that no tool reports.

§06What happens if you do not: fines, market surveillance, warning letters

The range of fines is set out in § 37(2) BFSG: up to €100,000 in the serious cases, up to €10,000 in the rest. The fine is the last stage of a procedure, though, not the first reaction.

How market surveillance actually checks

The body responsible for services is the Marktüberwachungsstelle der Länder für die Barrierefreiheit von Produkten und Dienstleistungen, the market surveillance body of the federal states for the accessibility of products and services: an institution under public law based in Magdeburg and carried by all federal states.

By its own account it works on two tracks: primarily reactive, that is, by handling complaints and applications, complemented by active, risk-based checks. Priority goes to offerings with a wide user reach, with particular importance for living independently, and with a history of defects.

For practice that means the most likely trigger is a complaint from an affected person. If you run a website that many people use, your risk is higher than a niche shop's, regardless of company size. There are no official figures on complaints, procedures opened or fines imposed. We therefore quote none.

The open question: can a BFSG breach trigger a warning letter?

Since the end of 2025 specialist sources have consistently reported a rise in warning letters over missing accessibility. At the same time: up to mid-2026 no court has decided whether the BFSG is a market conduct rule within the meaning of § 3a UWG. Without that classification, warning letters from competitors under competition law have no basis. We found no published decision.

Two lines of argument face each other. In favour of warning letters, the case law of the Federal Court of Justice on enforcing data protection breaches under competition law is cited as an analogy. Against it speaks the different protective purpose, and in many reported cases the competitor relationship is simply missing, for instance when a web design provider sends a warning letter to an online retailer.

If you receive a warning letter, do not sign it unchecked. A cease-and-desist undertaking with a penalty clause has permanent effect and costs more than checking whether it was justified in the first place.

§07Do I need an accessibility statement?

Yes, but not the one you probably have in mind. Under § 14(1) BFSG private service providers have to draw up information on accessibility and make it publicly available in an accessible form. That is something other than the “accessibility statement” of public bodies.

• a general description of the service
• the explanations needed to understand how it is carried out
• a description of how the accessibility requirements are met
• the name of the competent market surveillance authority

The decisive difference from the BITV statement of public bodies: there, non-conformities are listed. Under the BFSG full accessibility is mandatory, so there is nothing to concede. A BITV template with a list of known barriers on a shop is the wrong genre and documents a breach of the law.

The BFSG provides for no mandatory feedback mechanism of the kind in BITV 2.0. Consumers turn to the market surveillance body. In practice: an “Accessibility” link in the header or the footer, and behind it a page of its own with the four points. Under § 12 no. 2 BFSGV this information itself has to be provided through more than one sensory channel, understandably, in an adequate font size and with sufficient contrast.

§08What does an accessible website cost?

Not one of the ten top-ranked search results on this subject names a price. Public authorities are not allowed to, chambers and associations do not want to. We therefore give our own figures, as an order of magnitude, not as a market average.

Three notes on that. First: on a new build, accessibility is not a surcharge. Semantic HTML, a visible focus, sufficient contrasts and labelled form fields cost practically nothing extra to produce. It only gets expensive as a retrofit. Second: anyone who offers remediation without having audited the site first is guessing. Third: the assessment of a disproportionate burden under § 17 BFSG is not an exit that takes care of itself on the side. It has to be documented, kept for five years and renewed at least every five years, and anyone who has received public funding for accessibility cannot rely on it at all under § 17(4) BFSG.

§09What we do as an agency ourselves

We start with the inconvenient answer: beyourself.design is not itself covered by the BFSG. No contract can be concluded electronically on our site: there are forms for enquiries, but no ordering process. The element from § 1(3) no. 5 is therefore missing. We would rather say that ourselves than pin a conformity on us that is not one.

The site is built to the same rules we recommend to clients all the same. Verifiable in the source code:

• a skip link to the main content as the first focusable element in the layout
• the language marked up in the html element, set dynamically from the page language
• prefers-reduced-motion: reduce is evaluated in several places in the stylesheet, so motion can be switched off without losing content
• :focus-visible is styled in its own right, and the default focus is not removed
• aria-label on every control without visible text: navigation, language switch, back to top, breadcrumbs, dialogues
• no cookie banner, because no cookies are set, which removes the most common keyboard trap on the German web entirely

What we do not have yet: a page of our own with information on accessibility. It is not mandatory for us. It belongs on our list all the same, and it stands in the action plan for this article.

A second legal duty with a deadline in the same period is the labelling of AI-generated content, which has applied since 2 August 2026. Both hit the same place in the interface, and Article 50(5) of the AI Act expressly requires the AI notice to be accessible as well.

On client projects we check the scope first, before any quote. The first sentence of an accessibility quote should say whether the duty exists at all. We have talked more than one client out of paying for something that does not affect them, and the route from there leads through a custom build, not through a retrofit package.