Accessible websites: who is actually required to comply?

What the BFSG is actually about

The Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz transposes an EU directive into German law. It requires providers of certain products and services to make them usable by people with disabilities. For websites that mainly means: operable by keyboard, readable with a screen reader, sufficient contrast, and a comprehensible structure.

The qualification matters: the act does not apply blanket-fashion to “all websites”, but to services provided to consumers in electronic commerce. A pure business-card website with no sales or booking function is a different case from an online shop.

The micro-enterprise exemption

For many small businesses this is the decisive point. For services, the act provides an exemption for micro-enterprises — broadly, businesses with fewer than ten employees and annual turnover or an annual balance sheet total of no more than two million euros.

Two things are regularly overlooked. First, this exemption applies to services, and not in the same way to products. Second, the thresholds have to be assessed together and can change as a business grows. If you are just under them today, do not treat that as permanent.

Whether you fall under the exemption is precisely the question this article cannot answer for you. It is, however, worth settling once and bindingly rather than assuming.

How to spot an inaccessible website in ten minutes

Before commissioning anyone, a self-test is worth doing. It needs no software and no prior knowledge, and in practice it finds most of the typical problems.

Put the mouse aside and operate your own website using only the Tab key. That moves you from element to element, exactly as someone who cannot use a mouse would.

• Can you always see where you are? An invisible focus ring means the site is usable blind — in the bad sense
• Can you reach every link and button, including in the menu?
• If a menu or pop-up opens, can you get back out with the keyboard?
• Is the order logical, or does focus jump across the page?
• Can the contact form be completed and submitted without a mouse?

A second test takes even less time: zoom the page to 200 per cent in the browser. If text gets cut off, columns collapse over each other or buttons wander out of view, that is a finding — and one that costs you customers on small phones anyway.

What accessibility does not mean

Two widespread misunderstandings are worth clearing up, because they regularly lead to unnecessary spending.

First: accessible does not mean the site has to look plain or grey. Contrast requirements constrain colour combinations, not design. Almost any corporate identity can be implemented accessibly if it is considered at the design stage rather than afterwards.

Second: a bought-in overlay script — those widgets that toggle contrast and type size at the click of a button — does not make a site legally safe. Such tools paper over symptoms at the surface; they do not change the underlying structure, which is what actually matters. Anyone selling you accessibility as a subscription widget is not selling you an outcome.

Why it is worth the effort even without an obligation

The practically most important point comes last, and it is not a legal one. The measures involved are largely just good craft — they improve the site for every visitor, not only for the people the law has in mind.

• Sufficient contrast helps anyone looking at a phone in sunlight
• Keyboard operability is the basis of any fast interaction
• A clean heading structure is also exactly what search engines read
• Alternative text for images serves image search and screen readers alike
• Comprehensible form labels measurably reduce abandonment

Put differently: most of what accessibility consists of overlaps with what makes a website faster, clearer and easier to find anyway. That is why we build to these standards regardless of whether a client falls under the act.

What to sensibly do now

• Establish bindingly whether your offering falls under the BFSG — legally, not via a blog post
• Try your site once using only the keyboard, no mouse. Ten minutes uncovers most of it
• Check contrast and type sizes on a phone in daylight
• Make sure every meaningful image has alternative text
• Fold it into a relaunch you were planning anyway — retrofitting costs more

That last point is the commercially relevant one. Retrofitting accessibility into an existing site regularly costs more than designing it in from the start.

Common questions about the BFSG