Website check
Accessibility
Since 28 June 2025 the German Accessibility Act requires businesses offering services to consumers electronically to have accessible websites. Micro-enterprises under ten staff and under two million euros of turnover are exempt for services — there accessibility is a quality argument rather than an obligation.
What gets checked
21 individual checks at the standard level, ten more at the extended level
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Colour contrast
Calculated with the WCAG formula from the colours actually rendered, not estimated from the stylesheet. What ends up in the browser is what counts.
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Forms and controls
Labels programmatically associated with their field, controls without an accessible name, meaningless link texts.
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Keyboard operation
Removed focus indicator, positive tabindex values, missing skip link to the content.
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Structure and semantics
Landmark markup, ARIA errors, and tables without header cells.
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Media
Alternative texts, iframes without a title, automatically playing audio, videos without captions.
Extended level: the page gets operated
Four browser passes instead of one, and correspondingly longer — in exchange the run covers roughly 55 to 65 per cent of the success criteria, against 30 to 40 per cent at the standard level.
- Following keyboard focus step by step: focus traps, jumps backwards, whether the indicator is genuinely visible, invisible targets
- Reflow at 320 pixels width
- Text scaling to 200 per cent
- Target sizes of controls
- Behaviour under reduced-motion preferences
- Evaluation of the accessibility tree
Standards and references
- WCAG 2.2 as the rule set holding the actual success criteria
- EN 301 549 as the harmonised European standard
- The German Accessibility Act (BFSG) and BFSGV, binding since 28 June 2025
What the report contains
Findings with page, affected element and a concrete fix. Plus, in every report, an explicit note on which part could not be decided by machine — an accessibility report without that note would be a clean bill of health nobody should issue.
Where the audit reaches its limit
The homepage is what gets audited. What neither level does: judge whether an alternative text meaningfully describes the image, whether the reading order makes sense, whether error messages actually help, whether the language is comprehensible. Neither level is a conformity assessment under EN 301 549 — that requires a representative set of pages, testing with real assistive technology, evaluation of the judgement-dependent criteria and documentation per success criterion. Accreditation, incidentally, is not required for that: under the Accessibility Act the provider declares conformity themselves. If you need such an assessment: conformance assessment to EN 301 549.
Frequently asked questions
What prospective clients most often want to know before commissioning an audit.
Are we covered by the European Accessibility Act?
It mainly covers businesses offering digital products and services to consumers — among them online shops, banking services, e-books, telecommunications and passenger transport services. Micro-enterprises with fewer than ten staff and at most two million euros of annual turnover are exempt, but only for services, not for products. Pure business-to-business generally falls outside. Whether your offering is covered is a legal question; the technical audit tells you where you stand regardless.
Since when does the obligation apply?
Since 28 June 2025. In Germany the BFSG transposes the European Accessibility Act; the governing technical yardstick is the harmonised standard EN 301 549, which for web content essentially points to WCAG 2.2 conformance level AA. Public sector bodies were already under a comparable obligation through BITV 2.0.
Is an automated audit enough for a conformity statement?
No. The standard run covers roughly 30 to 40 per cent of the success criteria; the extended level, with four browser passes, 55 to 65. Whether an alternative text meaningfully describes the image, whether the reading order makes sense, whether an error message actually helps — no rule set decides that automatically. A conformity assessment under EN 301 549 additionally needs a representative set of pages, testing with real assistive technology and documentation per success criterion. Accreditation, incidentally, is not required: under the Accessibility Act the provider declares conformity themselves.
What is the automated audit good for, then?
It settles the part that can be decided with certainty, completely and on every run — and that is where the findings that repeat at scale sit: missing alternative texts, insufficient contrast, unlabelled form fields, broken heading hierarchies. Contrast is computed from the colours actually rendered, not estimated from the stylesheet. Clearing that by machine saves the expensive human review for the questions that genuinely need judgement.
What is the difference between the Accessibility Act, BITV 2.0 and WCAG?
WCAG 2.2 is the international rule set holding the actual success criteria. EN 301 549 is the European standard making those criteria binding in the European legal area. The Accessibility Act obliges private providers of certain consumer offerings; BITV 2.0 obliges German public sector bodies. In every case testing is essentially against the same WCAG criteria — what differs is who is obliged and what evidence is demanded.