Digital Accessibility - Accessible layout for your website
- Digital accessibility: for an inclusive digital world
- Free accessibility check for your website
- Compliant with the Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG)
We want to help businesses create a more inclusive digital world. After all, everyone should be able to use your website.
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What is digital accessibility?
Is your website already accessible?
Don't know? Then contact us and we will test your website free of charge and without obligation for accessibility according to BITV/WCAG/BFSG.
Learn moreDigital accessibility is crucial to ensure that people with disabilities have full access to digital content. A website is considered accessible if it can be found, accessed and used by people with disabilities without particular difficulty and, in principle, without outside help. The aim is to enable people with disabilities to have the same self-determination and independent use of websites as people without disabilities take for granted.
Almost 10 million people with disabilities live in Germany, and digital accessibility is crucial to ensure their participation in the digital society. But the significance goes far beyond the direct target group. Simple and accessible websites not only benefit people with disabilities, but also improve the user experience for a much wider user base.
What are the guidelines for digital accessibility?
In order to promote digital inclusion, guidelines have been established to ensure that everyone can find their way around the digital cosmos. Specifically, there are three directives.
WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines):
WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines):
The WCAG is an international web content accessibility guideline developed by the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). They set standards to ensure that websites and web applications are accessible to people with disabilities. The guidelines comprise four principles: perceptibility, operability, comprehensibility and robustness. Within these principles, concrete success criteria are defined to ensure that web content is perceptible and usable for different user groups.
BITV (Barrier-free Information Technology Ordinance):
The BITV is a German regulation that regulates the implementation of the WCAG guidelines for the German region. It serves to ensure the barrier-free design of digital information and communication technologies. The BITV specifies the requirements of the WCAG and determines how they are to be implemented in Germany. In particular, it addresses websites of public bodies of the federal government and of companies that take on public tasks.
BITV (Barrier-free Information Technology Ordinance):
BFSG (Accessibility Strengthening Act):
BFSG (Accessibility Strengthening Act):
The BFSG is a German law that aims to strengthen accessibility in the digital world. It will come into force on 28 June 2025 and obliges German companies to provide accessibility. Online retailers, for example, are affected by this. Those who already adhere to the WCAG or the BITV usually already meet the requirements of the BFSG.
Digital Accessibility Checklist - What Does It Include?
Our Digital Accessibility Checklist is designed to provide an overview of possible barriers. It can serve as a guide, but cannot replace complete quality control.
Sufficient contrast between foreground and background color
Sufficient contrast ensures that content is easily recognizable. Certain color combinations have less contrast, which are harder for many people to recognize.
By the way, not only do people with disabilities benefit from good contrasts, but mobile user-friendliness is also increased, for example in high sunlight.
Consider color refractive errors
When choosing colors, attention should also be paid to people with color vision defects. About 9 percent of all men and 1 percent of all women have a red-green weakness. Colours should therefore not be the only distinguishing feature.
Website Screen Reader Compatibility
Visually impaired people often use screen readers to read a text or describe an image. To do this, the heading end structure must be correctly marked (H1-H6).
ALT texts are also important for images. These act as a substitute for the image and should describe as precisely as possible what can be seen in the image.
Keyboard-friendly website
In general, a website should be usable with the keyboard, as some people have problems navigating with the mouse.
Size of buttons and links
Especially the mobile version often has too small interactive elements such as clickable buttons and links. Interactive elements should always be designed to be large enough so that even less fine motor people can operate them.
Use of comprehensible language
Sentences that are difficult to formulate or too many foreign words can make a text incomprehensible. Avoiding this is essential for digital accessibility. In addition, text should be logically structured and formatted in short paragraphs for better readability. After all, everyone benefits from clearly formulated, easy-to-read texts.
Accessibility of forms
Only if all forms such as: contact form, reviews, shopping carts, payment processes, etc. can be completed by anyone, the website can be considered accessible.
Declaration on accessibility
In order to be legally compliant in the future, your website will also need an "Accessibility Statement". This must be accessible and explain how digital accessibility is maintained on the site.
1-Click Solution - Why Overlays Aren't Enough
Overlays promise accessibility with little effort. These tools, implemented by JavaScript, make it possible, for example, to increase contrasts or adjust font sizes. However, they are generalized and can therefore never guarantee complete accessibility.
In the worst case, these "overlays" even trigger other problems that even reduce accessibility. So an individual solution is needed.
Who benefits from digital accessibility?
Digital accessibility - mandatory until 28.05.2025!
Online retailers have until the end of June 2025 to make their website inclusive, otherwise they face high fines. Take advantage of our free accessibility check now and we'll tell you if your website needs to be even more accessible.
334,600 people are considered visually impaired in Germany (Statista, as of 2021)
Better readability enables these people to navigate the internet better.
Around 1,092,000 people in Germany live with mental or cognitive impairments (Federal Statistical Office, as of 2021)
Simple and intuitive websites help people get where they want to go.
Every 10th man has a red-green weakness
Whenever information is only conveyed through colors, barriers can arise.
Almost every second person will soon be over 50
Our population is getting older and older, and we need to ensure that older people can find their way around digitally at all times.
Everyone benefits from digital accessibility
Not only people with disabilities benefit from digital accessibility. Many points generally improve the user-friendliness of the website.