Accessible Websites: What the BFSG Now Requires of Your Business

Since 28 June 2025, Germany's Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz (BFSG) has been in force. Many businesses have heard about it but are unsure what actually needs to change. This article gives a practical overview without unnecessary alarm.

What the BFSG Is and Who It Affects

The BFSG implements an EU directive into German law, requiring that certain digital products and services be usable by everyone. The law primarily targets online shops and digital services aimed at consumers.

Micro-enterprises (generally fewer than ten employees and annual turnover or balance sheet totalling under two million euros) are exempt from parts of the requirements for some services. Whether your business qualifies for that exemption, and which obligations still apply, is something worth checking with a lawyer.

For everyone else: a website that people with disabilities cannot use now carries a legal risk.

What Accessibility Means on a Website

Accessibility is not a visual feature. It is a question of technology and structure. The key requirements are:

• Keyboard navigation: Every function, menu, and form must be reachable without a mouse. This helps people with motor impairments and users of screen readers.
• Sufficient colour contrast: Text must stand out clearly from its background. The minimum contrast ratio for body text is 4.5 to 1.
• Alt text for images: Every image that carries meaning needs a description a screen reader can read aloud. Purely decorative images should have an empty alt attribute.
• Clear page structure: Headings should follow a logical order (H1, H2, H3 and so on) so assistive tools can navigate the page meaningfully.
• Visible focus: When someone tabs through a page, the currently focused element must be visually apparent.
• Reduced motion: Animations should pause or scale back when the user's operating system has the reduced-motion preference set. This protects people with vestibular disorders or epilepsy.
• Captions for video: Anyone using video with spoken content should offer captions.

Many of these points are technically straightforward when built in from the start. Retrofitting takes more effort.

The Value Beyond Compliance

Accessibility is often seen as a burden. In practice it tends to be an advantage:

• Larger audience: Roughly one in five people lives with some form of impairment. Add older users who benefit from clear structure and readable text, and the reach grows considerably.
• Better usability for everyone: A well-structured page is easier to understand for any visitor. Good contrast also helps on a phone screen in bright sunlight.
• SEO benefits: Search engines read pages similarly to screen readers. Clean headings, meaningful alt text, and logical structure all support better rankings.
• Reduced legal exposure: A demonstrably accessible website gives less grounds for complaints and enforcement action.

Where to Start

A sensible first step is an audit of your current site. Tools like the WAVE browser extension or Lighthouse in Chrome DevTools give a quick first read. For a reliable assessment, manual testing by people who actually use assistive technology is more thorough.

Anyone planning a new website or preparing a relaunch should list accessibility as a requirement from day one. The goal is not instant perfection but a genuine, ongoing commitment to improvement. Regulators and courts look for evidence of good-faith effort.

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This article is general information and not legal advice. Whether and to what extent the BFSG applies to your business and website is something to clarify with a qualified lawyer.