Conformance assessment to EN 301 549

When you need this

A conformance assessment is needed when a statement about accessibility has to be substantiated — not merely improved.

• Public body: accessibility statement, justified per requirement (Directive (EU) 2016/2102, BITV 2.0).
• Company providing services to consumers: information on the accessibility of the service (BFSG, BFSGV — the German implementation of the European Accessibility Act).
• Tender or supplier review: evidence on request of the client.
• After a complaint or an authority's enquiry: a result per success criterion.

If you are a micro-enterprise with fewer than ten staff and under two million euro turnover providing services, the BFSG exempts you. Accessibility is then a quality argument, and this assessment is not required for you. We say that before the quotation, not after.

What the automated check does — and does not

Our accessibility website check examines what is technically examinable. Of the 55 success criteria at levels A and AA it touches 22. “Touches” is not “assesses”, and that difference is the substance of this service:

• Finding — the check found something. A human writes the justification.
• No finding — checked, nothing found. That is not “passed”: whether an alternative text is apt, whether the reading order makes sense, whether an error message actually helps — no machine sees that.
• No preparatory work — 33 criteria the check does not touch at all. They need a keyboard, a screen reader, zoom, pointer gestures and a form journey walked through end to end.

The automated check is therefore the run-up, not the substitute. It saves time in the search, not in the judgement.

How the assessment works

Following WCAG-EM, the W3C's evaluation methodology. Not a standard, but the established procedure — and a report that cites it can be retraced.

1. Define the scope: areas, target conformance (AA), assistive technologies and browsers with versions. Areas behind a login are explicitly in or explicitly out.
2. Explore the site: template types, functional journeys, language versions, downloadable documents, third-party content such as maps, videos and payment windows.
3. Select and justify the sample: home page, one page per template type, every functional journey in full, error and confirmation pages, legal notices, plus a random selection.
4. Run the automated pass across the whole sample.
5. Test manually: keyboard pass, zoom to 400 %, text spacing, contrast mode, pointer gestures, forms with deliberate invalid input.
6. Verify with assistive technology: at least two combinations, one of them mobile. The versions go in the report — a result without a version is not retraceable a year later.
7. Document per criterion: passed, failed or not applicable — with location, method and justification. “Not applicable” is justified, not asserted.

Users with disabilities can be involved on request. That is not normatively required and is agreed separately.

What you receive

• Criteria matrix covering every criterion assessed, with verdict, location and justification.
• Defect list ordered by impact, with the technical remedy — and stating which template is affected. A fix in the template takes effect on every page that uses it; that is the single most useful piece of information for your planning.
• Report with scope, sample, methods, versions, date, procedure and limits.
• Draft of the accessibility statement, for you to complete and issue.
• Re-assessment after remediation, limited to the criteria objected to, continuing the matrix.

What this assessment is not

• You declare, we substantiate. Under the Accessibility Act and the BITV the provider issues the statement themselves. Accreditation is neither required nor available — nobody may grant it, ourselves included. What you receive is precisely what such a statement has to rest on: a verdict per success criterion, with location and justification, that holds up when questioned.
• A snapshot of a named sample. There is no statement about “the website”; new content the next day can overturn a criterion.
• Judgements remain judgements. On criteria such as 1.3.1 or 2.4.4 two careful assessors can reach different conclusions. The report justifies the verdict so that it can be challenged — not so that it looks unchallengeable.
• Not legal advice. Whether the obligation applies in your case, and how to respond to an authority, belongs with a lawyer.

Effort

Billed by time and materials. For a sample of ten pages, one language version, target conformance AA:

• Define the scope and explore the site — 3 to 5 hours
• Select and justify the sample — 1 to 2 hours
• Automated pass and its evaluation — 1 to 2 hours
• Manual testing, 1.5 to 3 hours per page — 15 to 30 hours
• Testing with assistive technology, half an hour to an hour per page — 5 to 10 hours
• Criteria matrix and report — 5 to 8 hours
• Walk-through — 1 to 2 hours
• 31 to 59 hours in total.

This breakdown is here so that you can do the arithmetic — and so that you can tell what an offer leaves unsaid when it promises the same work in ten hours. Anyone offering a conformance assessment for ten hours is not assessing but asserting.

On request — because the effort cannot be estimated without looking inside: areas behind a login and customer portals, each further language version, downloadable documents (per PDF, clause 10 of EN 301 549), mobile applications, involvement of users with disabilities.

You receive a binding quotation once the scope is settled. All amounts net, plus 19 % VAT.