The implications for companies, web designers, and why it matters.
Accessibility is fundamental to how we make websites. That’s because creating a web that works for everyone is the right thing to do. But it’s also a design philosophy: Rather than an add-on, accessibility determines how a website is built in the first place.
Here we’ll talk about the situation in Germany, which is where our company is based and where we know the laws best. But since the German law (the “Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz”, or “Accessibility Strengthening Act”) is based on a European directive (the “European Accessibility Act”), the situation is similar in other EU member states.
What is accessibility in the context of websites?
Broadly speaking, accessibility refers to accommodations and affordances that make content on websites accessible to people with disabilities. For this overview, we can divide them into a few categories:
Structure
- Layouts should be clear, with information easy to find.
- Images should include descriptive alt text or labels.
- Videos should have subtitles.
Usability
- People should be able to navigate a website with a keyboard instead of a mouse.
- It needs to support assistive technologies like screen readers.
Content
- Text should be easy to read: It needs to be big enough and offer sufficient contrast to the background.
- You should stick to web conventions like clear, descriptive links.
- Links and buttons should indicate what happens when you press them.
- Animations should be limited and you should offer an option to turn them off.
Sounds complicated? Doesn’t have to be.
Many of these steps are actually fairly straightforward, as long as they’re considered early on. Particularly when creating the structure and content of a website, it’s important to design in a way that makes websites accessible. It means thinking about how to structure information clearly and to create content that communicates effectively.
But overall, accessibility can be accomplished with the technologies that have existed for a long time. The fundamental programming languages for websites have been supporting accessibility features for years. It’s just that implementing accessibility features required more effort and testing than ignoring them, which is why many websites were never set up to be accessible.
If accessibility is planned for from the beginning of a website project, it doesn’t have to be complicated. On the contrary: Retrofitting accessibility to an existing website is likely a lot more complicated and costly than thinking about these requirements from the get-go.
What does the law say?
Accessibility became a hot topic when it became a legal requirement: When the accessibility requirements went into force in June 2025, the majority of B2C websites “processing business transactions” need to be accessible—as long as they are made by companies with more than 10 employees or more than €2 million in annual turnover.
Broadly speaking, that covers online shops but also businesses like banks and insurance companies, or digital products and web apps. It also includes online services as common as contact forms or booking systems.
In some places, the law is a bit vague: For instance, it doesn’t specifically define where B2C ends and B2B begins, leaving some companies in doubt if the rules apply to them. But even so: Even when companies aren’t legally required to offer it, accessibility reduces the risk of lawsuits and improves user experience for all visitors.
Who makes the rules?
A good starting point is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which is the internationally recognized standard maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and has three levels: A, AA, AAA. If your website falls into the categories mentioned above, this standard likely applies to it. In Germany, we use WCAG 2.1 AA (the intermediate level of accessibility) as a common benchmark.
What tends to cause confusion is that “accessibility” can mean different things in different contexts. That’s because there are different standards for accessibility, and some are more stringent than others.
For instance, governments have subjected themselves to more stringent accessibility standards than private companies—which makes sense, because everyone in the country, regardless of disabilities, needs to be able to use government services.
In Germany, government websites use a standard called BITV 2.0, which includes the WCAG but also includes rules such as offering content in Easy Language (Leichte Sprache) and German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache). It also rules out most animations. This standard is not currently required for private companies.
Why accessibility is worth investing in
We think it’s short-sighted to think of accessibility as just a requirement. It’s actually an important step to make websites easier to use, and can even help a company improve their user base or boost their SEO efforts (for instance, Google takes accessibility into consideration when ranking websites).
Beyond legal compliance, accessibility helps make the web a nicer place and makes websites more usable in edge cases (think about being able to read high-contrast text in the sun, or avoiding confusion because of a clearly-labeled button). Accessbility is good practice, and we think it benefits everyone.
Looking for help on creating an accessible website? Get in touch!