Germany's BFSG and BITV 2.0, for website teams

Which services the BFSG covers

§ 1(3) lists the services, when they are offered to consumers:

• E-commerce: under § 2 no. 26, services offered through websites and mobile apps with a view to concluding a consumer contract. In practice that is almost every online shop and booking flow.
• Consumer banking services.
• Telecommunications services.
• Parts of air, bus, rail and waterborne passenger transport: websites, apps, e-tickets, real-time information and terminals.
• E-books and the software used to read them.

What a website must do

The detailed requirements are in the BFSG regulation (BFSGV). Websites and apps must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust (§ 12 no. 3), and e-commerce must make identification, authentication, security and payment functions accessible (§ 19). That is the checkout, the sign-in and the payment step, which is often where third-party widgets fail.

You must publish accessibility information. Under § 14 and Annex 3, a service provider states, in its general terms and conditions or another clearly perceivable way, how the service meets the requirements, with a general description, the explanations needed to understand it, and the competent market surveillance authority. The information itself must be accessible. Missing or incomplete information is a formal non-conformity (§ 30(2)), so it is the first thing to fix.

Which standard shows conformity

§ 4 presumes conformity for services that meet harmonised standards published in the Official Journal of the EU. It names no standard, and no harmonised standard for the Act had been cited as of September 2026. Until one is, the Federal Accessibility Agency (Bundesfachstelle Barrierefreiheit) points to EN 301 549 as the benchmark. Its web clauses follow WCAG 2.1 Level AA in V3.2.1 and WCAG 2.2 in V4.1.1, published in September 2026, so WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the safe target.

Enforcement and fines

The Länder enforce the BFSG through one joint authority, the Marktüberwachungsstelle der Länder für die Barrierefreiheit von Produkten und Dienstleistungen (MLBF) in Magdeburg, which began work on 26 September 2025. It checks services on its own initiative through samples (§ 28(2)), not only on complaint. If a service does not conform it sets a deadline, then warns, and can finally order the service to stop (§ 29). By 1 June 2026 it was handling almost 700 reports, according to the state of Saxony-Anhalt.

• Fines (§ 37): up to EUR 100,000 for the offences in § 37(1) nos. 1 and 7 to 10, which include offering a service that does not meet the requirements; up to EUR 10,000 for the others.
• Consumers can ask the MLBF to open proceedings (§ 32), and so can recognised disability associations.
• Associations can take the case to the administrative courts (§ 33), and consumers can apply to the federal conciliation body (§ 34).

BITV 2.0 for public bodies

Federal public bodies follow the Disability Equality Act (BGG) and BITV 2.0, Germany's rules under the Web Accessibility Directive. Conformity follows the harmonised standard cited in the Official Journal (§ 3(2)), which is EN 301 549 V3.2.1. On top of it:

• An accessibility statement (Erklärung zur Barrierefreiheit) reachable from the homepage and every page, updated every year and after any significant change (§ 7).
• A feedback mechanism on every page (§ 7(2)), with a reply within one month (§ 12b(4) BGG), and a link to the conciliation body (§ 16 BGG).
• Explanations on the homepage in German Sign Language and Easy Language (Leichte Sprache) of the main content, navigation and statement (§ 4). No automated tool can check these.

The federal monitoring body, BFIT-Bund, checked over 270 federal websites and apps for its 2025 report. State and municipal bodies are covered by each Land's own law instead.

What is changing in 2026

The federal cabinet adopted a reform of the BGG on 11 February 2026 that would require private businesses to make reasonable accommodations (angemessene Vorkehrungen) so disabled people can use their goods and services. The Bundestag held the first reading on 7 May 2026 and a committee hearing on 22 June 2026. It had not become law when this page was checked. The labour ministry says the draft rules out damages claims against private companies. Separately, the BFSG regulation was amended on 10 July 2026, for self-service terminals and for telecommunications.

What an automated scan can tell you

No scanner can certify conformity with the BFSG or BITV 2.0, and some duties, like the published accessibility information and the Sign Language and Easy Language pages, are for people to write. What a scan does is test, on every page and every time, the WCAG criteria that can be measured: contrast, names and labels, language, keyboard focus, target size and more. It lists which criteria it could not test, rather than counting them as passes. It also checks that each page declares the language its text is actually written in.

On the Team plan, scans can run signed in, which reaches the account and checkout pages § 19 singles out, and the Compliance tab drafts an accessibility statement and an EN 301 549 criterion table from the scan. See the compliance reporting overview