BFSG 2026: When Your Website Must Be Accessible

The Accessibility Strengthening Act is Germany's implementation of the European Accessibility Act, an EU directive intended to make digital products and services accessible to people with disabilities across Europe (German government). The goal is that people with visual, hearing, motor or cognitive impairments can use websites, online shops and digital services without outside help. This concerns more people than many assume: around 7.9 million (Federal Statistical Office) people with severe disabilities live in Germany, plus a growing older population that also benefits from good usability.

The law has applied since 28 June 2025 (German government). Until the end of 2025 this felt like a grace period because checks and procedures were only ramping up. That is now over: the responsible market surveillance authorities of the states have been actively checking since the start of 2026, warning letters are increasing and the first court proceedings are emerging (quellcoder.de). This very development is causing uncertainty in 2026 - and makes it sensible to clarify your own exposure now rather than wait.

The law targets companies that offer certain products and services to consumers. On the web, this mainly means services in electronic commerce - that is, all offerings where users can conclude a contract online or trigger a binding action (e-recht24, HÄRTING law firm). The decisive question is: does the website work towards concluding a contract? If so, it falls within the scope.

Important for many local businesses: a pure brochure website without a shop, without binding booking and without an online contract conclusion - that is, only information, a phone number and a simple contact form - does not necessarily fall within the narrow scope of the BFSG according to the prevailing view. The boundary is fluid, however, and a simple contact form is sometimes assessed differently from a binding booking flow. If you are unsure, you should have your specific range of features reviewed rather than relying on a blanket assumption.

Probably the most frequently asked question is: as a small business, am I not exempt anyway? The law does indeed have an exemption for micro-enterprises - but it is narrower than many hope. A micro-enterprise is defined as a business with fewer than 10 employees and at most 2 million euros in annual turnover or annual balance sheet total (Haendlerbund). Yet this exemption applies exclusively to services - not to products.

This distinction causes most of the misunderstandings in practice. Many small businesses assume across the board that they are exempt because they have fewer than 10 employees. What is overlooked is that even a small web shop, the sale of individual items or a binding online booking can override the exemption. Both thresholds must also be undercut: anyone with 12 employees but under 2 million euros in turnover is still no longer a micro-enterprise.

Violations carry noticeable consequences. Standard violations such as a missing accessibility statement or individual WCAG errors are punished with fines of up to 10,000 euros, while severe or repeated violations can cost up to 100,000 euros (Section 37 BFSG). On top of this come possible prohibition orders, which in extreme cases can lead to a non-compliant offering having to be withdrawn from the market. These figures are upper limits, not automatic outcomes - authorities generally set deadlines for remediation first.

A separate and often overlooked point is the accessibility statement. Every affected website needs such a statement, which describes the current state of accessibility, openly names known limitations and provides a contact for feedback and complaints (Web Accessibility Checker). It is a duty in its own right: even a largely accessible site can be objected to if the statement is missing. Anyone planning a website relaunch should factor it in from the start rather than retrofit it later.

For context: since August 2025 the first competition-law warning letters have been circulating, and in 2026 market surveillance has reached its active enforcement phase (DOSIGNY, quellcoder.de). Some of these warning letters are legally disputed because there is often no genuine competitive relationship between sender and recipient (anwalt.de). Anyone who receives a warning letter should therefore have it reviewed and not sign it unseen - the amounts and cease-and-desist declarations demanded are not in every case justified.

The technical benchmark for accessibility is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG for short, usually at conformance level AA. How far the average falls short is shown by one of the largest regular studies of the web: the WebAIM Million 2025 analysed the home pages of the one million most-visited websites. The result is sobering - on 94.8 percent (WebAIM Million 2025) of the home pages examined, automated tests found WCAG violations, on average 51 errors (WebAIM Million 2025) per page.

The good news: the errors are not randomly distributed. Six recurring problem types account for around 96 percent (WebAIM Million 2025) of all automatically detected errors. Anyone who tackles these specifically considerably improves a site's accessibility. The following list shows the most common errors and their share of all analysed home pages.

Behind the abstract WCAG criteria lie very concrete situations. A visually impaired user reads the site with a screen reader that reads content aloud to her - it can only describe an image if alternative text is provided, and only announce a form field meaningfully if it has a linked label. A user with a motor impairment operates the site solely via the keyboard rather than the mouse; he depends on every link, button and menu being reachable with the tab key and the focus remaining visible. And older visitors with declining eyesight benefit immediately from sufficient text contrast - the very criterion that, according to the WebAIM Million 2025, is violated on 79.1 percent (WebAIM Million 2025) of home pages.

These requirements can be broken down into four understandable principles that the WCAG are based on: content should be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. Perceivable means that information is not conveyed by colour or image alone. Operable means the site works without a mouse. Understandable calls for clear language and predictable behaviour. Robust, finally, means the site works reliably with assistive technologies such as screen readers. Anyone who considers these four guidelines when building a site meets a large part of the requirements without it feeling like an additional obligation.

The effort for these points is manageable in a new project because they can be built into design and technology from the start. It becomes harder with subsequent corrections to a grown site, where contrasts, structures and components first have to be broken open. This is precisely why the question of relaunch or retrofit is more than a matter of taste - it often decides effort and outcome.

Once it is clear that a business is affected, there are two paths: retrofit the existing site or rebuild it as part of a relaunch, accessible from the start. Both have their place. Retrofitting an existing site is demanding depending on complexity - with the risk that an ageing site keeps throwing up new issues. If, on the other hand, accessibility is planned into a new project from the start, experience shows the additional effort is considerably lower than a later retrofit (W3C WAI).

This is precisely where the pragmatic advantage of a relaunch lies: instead of laboriously extending an old structure with contrasts, labels and focus orders, a modern site emerges that thinks accessibility, loading speed and search engine optimisation together from the ground up. When a relaunch is worthwhile and how to recognise the right moment we describe in detail in our article Website relaunch: when it is worth it. In 2026, accessibility is an additional, weighty argument for this step.

Accessibility pays off beyond mere compliance. A site that everyone can operate reaches a larger audience, looks more professional and incidentally supports search engine optimisation, because many WCAG criteria - clean structure, descriptive text, good operability - also help search engines. Anyone already working on turning visitors into enquiries benefits twice: low-barrier forms and clear operating paths increase conversion for all users.

The fact that we come from the region is an advantage precisely on a legally tinged topic. In a personal conversation we first clarify whether and to what extent your business is affected, rather than creating effort prematurely. Only then do we decide together on the right path. Anyone who takes their local visibility seriously will find additional starting points in our article on local visibility in Hildesheim that combine well with an accessible relaunch.