The law
Why accessibility is now a duty
Five minutes for the management: does it apply to us, from when, what has to be done, and what happens if it is not.
7 min read
In short
Since 28 June 2025 many digital services for consumers in Germany have to be accessible. The technical yardstick is EN 301 549, which points at WCAG level AA. Micro-enterprises are exempt for services. Enforcement is by market surveillance, actively and on complaint, and the fine framework reaches 100,000 euro.
The German Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) transposes the European Accessibility Act. It is not a funding programme and not a recommendation, it is a market-access condition: whoever offers a covered service has to offer it accessibly. Other EU states transpose the same directive through their own laws.
Does it apply to us?
Three questions settle it in most cases:
- Is the offering aimed at consumers? Pure B2B is generally not covered.
- Is it one of the services the act names? Among them: electronic commerce (online shops), consumer banking, telecommunications, passenger transport, e-books and audiovisual media services.
- Are we a micro-enterprise? For services there is an exemption for companies with fewer than ten employees and at most two million euro annual turnover or balance-sheet total.
Since when
| Date | What applies |
|---|---|
| 28 June 2025 | The BFSG applies. There is no general grace period for websites and apps. |
| until 27 June 2030 | A narrow transitional rule for service contracts concluded before the cut-off date, and for certain self-service terminals. |
The guide on deadlines and transitional rules goes into detail.
What is actually required
The act states goals; the harmonised European standard EN 301 549 supplies the technical detail. For web content it points at WCAG, conformance level AA. In practice that means three things:
- The service itself has to be operable: with a keyboard, with a screen reader, at high magnification, with sufficient contrast.
- There has to be information about its accessibility, usually a statement with a route for feedback.
- Both have to be evidenced. An assertion without an assessment does not help in a procedure.
What that looks like concretely
An online shop
- Checkout can only be completed with a mouse, because one step never takes keyboard focus (WCAG 2.1.1).
- The error in the address form has a red border but is named nowhere in text (WCAG 3.3.1).
- The basket reports „added“ visually only, with no announcement for assistive technology (WCAG 4.1.3).
A booking flow
- The date picker can be opened with the keyboard but not left again (WCAG 2.1.2).
- At 200 percent text size price and date overlap and the price becomes unreadable (WCAG 1.4.4).
- Seat selection arrives in the accessibility tree as an unnamed element (WCAG 4.1.2).
A banking portal
- The one-time-code entry times out with no way to extend it (WCAG 2.2.1).
- Balances are distinguished as debit or credit by colour alone (WCAG 1.4.1).
- The identification video has no captions (WCAG 1.2.2).
Who enforces it, and what happens then
In Germany this is the market-surveillance body run jointly by all sixteen federal states, seated in Magdeburg, which took up nationwide work in September 2025. It acts on its own initiative, often automatically and at scale, and additionally on complaint.
What usually comes first is a demand to remediate within a deadline. That deadline is the real cost: it runs while you are still working out what is affected, and remediation under supervision is more expensive than the same work on your own schedule. Let it pass and you risk the fine plus the order that weighs more than money: a ban on offering the service.
| What | Source | Country / year |
|---|---|---|
| Fine framework up to 100,000 euro for the serious offences, up to 10,000 euro for information and marking duties | § 37 BFSG | DE |
| Application from 28 June 2025 | BFSG, commencement provision | DE, 2025 |
| Competent market surveillance: joint authority of the 16 federal states, seated in Magdeburg, operating nationwide since September 2025 | Ministry for Labour, Social Affairs, Health and Equality of Saxony-Anhalt | DE, 2025 |
| Micro-enterprise exemption for services (fewer than 10 employees, at most 2 million euro turnover or balance-sheet total) | § 3 BFSG | DE |
| The European basis the BFSG follows from | Directive (EU) 2019/882 (European Accessibility Act) | EU, 2019 |
| Technical yardstick, pointing at WCAG level AA for the web | EN 301 549 | EU, harmonised standard |
| Croatian transposition of the same directive | Zakon o zahtjevima za pristupačnost proizvoda i usluga | HR |
How this is already being enforced in Europe
The question is not whether enforcement happens but when your turn comes. Three decisions, each publicly documented and linked at the end of this section.
Norway: 150,000 kroner for being one day late
The Norwegian supervisory authority audited the University of Bergen and found eight of eleven requirements breached, among them its digital examination platform. The deadline to fix them ran out at noon on 22 October 2021; the fixes landed on 23 October. That single day cost a daily fine of 150,000 Norwegian kroner. Norway has required accessible ICT of private companies too since 2013, regardless of their size, and the authority sets daily fines at a level where doing nothing does not pay.
France: even the finance ministry gets served
On 24 June 2026 the regulator Arcom served formal notice on the French ministry for public accounts: impots.gouv.fr fails the technical requirements and lacks the mandatory accessibility information. Nine months to fix the technology, two months for the information, after which a financial sanction of up to 50,000 euro is available. Two things stand out: the authority that collects the taxes gets no exemption, and the missing statement is a separate breach with its own, much shorter deadline. For private providers in France the consumer-protection authority DGCCRF is competent, not Arcom.
United States: six years of litigation over a pizza
Guillermo Robles, who is blind, could not order a pizza on Domino's website or app with his screen reader and sued in 2016. In 2019 the federal appeals court held that the ADA covers the website and the app, and the Supreme Court declined to review, so that stood. On 23 June 2021 the district court found the violation, awarded damages and ordered the website brought up to WCAG 2.0. The remainder settled in 2022. The number that matters is not the 4,000 dollars in damages but six years of proceedings, legal costs on both sides, and a rebuild on a court's timetable. A different legal system, so no forecast for Europe: the point is what the late moment costs.
What you will not find here is a percentage probability of being fined. There is no sound basis for one, and whoever quotes you a figure has guessed it. That is why our risk calculator shows two numbers you can measure instead of one that sounds good.
| Case | Source | Country / year |
|---|---|---|
| Daily fine of 150,000 kroner against the University of Bergen | Tilsynet for universell utforming av ikt, notice of the daily fine | NO, 2021 |
| Accessible ICT required of private companies as well | Forskrift om universell utforming av IKT-løsninger | NO, 2013 |
| Formal notice over impots.gouv.fr, nine- and two-month deadlines | Arcom, Décision du 24 juin 2026 | FR, 2026 |
| Robles v. Domino's Pizza: violation found, WCAG 2.0 remediation ordered | Robles v. Domino's Pizza LLC, C.D. Cal., judgment of 23 June 2021; before that 9th Circuit 2019, certiorari denied | US, 2019 and 2021 |
What to do now
- Find out where you stand: a measurement is cheaper than any assumption.
- Fix blockers in the core journeys first, meaning where buying, signing in and getting in touch happen.
- Publish an accessibility statement with a route for feedback. It is verifiable in seconds and therefore the first thing a check looks for.
- Hold the state: every release can bring a barrier back.
A first finding comes from the free scan. How your situation looks in two disclosed percentages is what the risk calculator shows.
Frequently asked questions
- Does the BFSG apply if we only sell to business customers?
- Generally not. The act targets services for consumers. As soon as you also sell to private individuals you are covered, and many shops do so in practice without keeping track of it.
- We are very small. Are we automatically out?
- For services there is a micro-enterprise exemption: fewer than ten employees and at most two million euro annual turnover or balance-sheet total. It does not apply to products. And it only relieves you legally: your customers still hit the barriers.
- Is an overlay widget enough?
- No. The European Commission has made clear that overlays do not establish legal conformance, and they have themselves been the target of lawsuits. They change nothing about the cause in the source code.
- How quickly can this be fixed?
- Depending on the size of the site the scan runs for minutes to hours: six analysis layers over every page in scope, plus the verification of each proposed fix against our own copy of the page. Whatever is unambiguous is settled by then; whatever is not goes to a human, so the reviewed report is with you within one to three working days. How long remediation takes after that depends on what is found: many findings are systematic defects fixed once in a template, after which they disappear everywhere.
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