Website accessibility requirements in Germany, the EU and the US: who must comply and where a widget helps
Whether your website has to be accessible by law depends on where your customers are, what the site does and how big your business is. In Germany and the rest of the EU, the rules cover consumer services such as online shops, booking and banking, and service providers with fewer than 10 employees are exempt. In the US, the ADA covers websites of businesses open to the public, without a size exemption and without a fixed technical standard.
This guide compares the three markets, lists the exemptions and limits, and shows where an accessibility widget makes daily life easier for site owners, and where it does not.
Website accessibility requirements at a glance
Germany
Law: Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz (BFSG), in force since 28 June 2025.
Who: online shops, online booking and other e-commerce services for consumers, banking, e-books, telecoms, passenger transport.
Exempt: service providers with fewer than 10 employees and no more than €2 million turnover or balance sheet.
Enforcement: the joint market surveillance office of the federal states (MLBF); fines of up to €100,000.
European Union
Law: European Accessibility Act (EAA), applied through national laws since 28 June 2025.
Who: the same consumer services as in Germany, in every EU country.
Exempt: micro-enterprises that provide services; some pre-2025 contracts until 2030.
Enforcement: set by each country, for example up to €80,000 in Austria.
United States
Law: Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Title III, plus state laws such as California's Unruh Act.
Who: businesses open to the public; courts are split on online-only businesses.
Exempt: no general small-business exemption.
Enforcement: mainly private lawsuits: 3,948 digital accessibility cases in 2025, according to UsableNet.
In Europe, the technical reference is the standard EN 301 549, which follows WCAG 2.1 level AA for websites and apps. An update based on WCAG 2.2 was published in September 2026 but is not yet the legally cited version.
Germany: the BFSG
The BFSG is not a general rule for every website. It applies when your site or app is how consumers buy from you or book with you: an online shop, an appointment or ticket booking, a banking service. A site that only presents a business, without a way to conclude a contract online, is generally not covered.
Micro-enterprise exemption: service providers with fewer than 10 employees and either turnover or a balance sheet total of no more than €2 million do not have to meet the requirements. The exemption does not apply to manufacturers and sellers of the products the law covers.
Transition: contracts for services concluded before 28 June 2025 can continue unchanged until they end, at the latest 27 June 2030.
Accessibility information: covered providers must explain how their service meets the requirements, in their terms and conditions or another clearly visible place, and name the market surveillance authority.
Enforcement: the MLBF in Magdeburg takes complaints and can check services on its own initiative. Offering a non-compliant service can be fined up to €100,000. Reports of private warning letters since 2025 exist, but whether such letters are valid is disputed.
The rest of the EU: the European Accessibility Act
The EAA sets the same scope across the EU: e-commerce, consumer banking, e-books, telecoms and digital services in passenger transport. It also exempts micro-enterprises that provide services. What differs from country to country is who enforces the rules and how much a violation costs:
France: fines of up to €7,500, plus daily penalties of up to €3,000 until the service is fixed, capped at €300,000.
Italy: fines from €5,000 to €40,000 for non-compliant services.
Austria: up to €80,000 for certain violations, and up to €50,000 for small and medium-sized businesses.
If you sell to consumers in several EU countries, the rules of each of those markets can apply. Public-sector websites follow a separate law, the Web Accessibility Directive.
The United States: the ADA
The ADA has no technical rulebook for private websites. The Department of Justice says that inaccessible websites of businesses open to the public can discriminate against people with disabilities, and it treats WCAG as helpful guidance rather than a required standard. The 2024 rule that requires WCAG 2.1 AA applies only to state and local governments, and its deadlines were moved to 2027 and 2028 in April 2026.
No size exemption: small businesses are covered as well, even if remedies can differ.
Online-only businesses: federal courts disagree on whether they are covered. Under California's Unruh Act, websites of businesses with physical locations carry the highest risk.
Lawsuits: UsableNet counted 3,948 digital accessibility lawsuits in 2025. In 983 of them, about 25 percent, the website already had an accessibility widget installed.
Exempt does not mean irrelevant
Many small businesses fall under an exemption in Europe. Accessibility still pays off for them: older visitors, people reading on a phone in bright sunlight, customers with dyslexia or a broken arm all use the same site. Search engines also read alt text and a clean heading structure. And a business that grows past 10 employees or into new markets will need it later anyway.
Where an accessibility widget helps site owners
Most site owners do not have time to audit every page after each update. This is where a widget such as accessiBe's accessWidget takes work off your plate. It installs with a short script on almost any website, and ready-made apps exist for website builders such as Wix. Two situations come up constantly:
You forgot some alt text
A product photo goes live without a description, or a blog image is uploaded in a hurry. The widget scans the site and, where alt text is missing, generates a description with image recognition and reads text inside images with OCR, so screen reader users are not left with a file name. It does not overwrite alt text you wrote yourself.
The design is not fully optimized
Low contrast in the brand colors, small text, a busy animation in the header. With the accessiBe widget, visitors can choose a profile, such as vision impaired, ADHD friendly, seizure safe or cognitive support, or adjust text size, spacing, contrast and fonts themselves. They meet your site halfway without a redesign.
Keyboard and screen reader users
The widget adds keyboard navigation with shortcuts for menus, headings and forms, and labels for forms and icons that screen readers rely on.
Rechecks after updates
It rescans the site regularly, so new pages and content get the same adjustments without a separate task on your list.
For key images, still write the alt text yourself. Generated descriptions say what is in a picture, but only you know why it is there. If readability is a concern, the font itself matters too; we looked at one option in our post about Fast-Font.
What a widget does not do
It does not make a site compliant by itself. In January 2025 the US Federal Trade Commission ordered accessiBe to pay $1 million and to stop claiming that its widget can make any website WCAG compliant.
It works on one domain. The widget works on the domain where it is installed and does not change content on other domains, such as third-party checkout or booking pages.
It does not fix documents and media. PDFs, video captions and audio transcripts need separate work.
It does not replace testing. Forms, checkout and error messages are where real users get stuck; test them with a keyboard and a screen reader.
A practical plan for site owners
Whatever market you are in, the same order of work keeps effort and risk low:
Check whether you are covered
List the markets you sell to, what your site lets customers do and, in the EU, whether you are a micro-enterprise.
Fix the basics yourself
Alt text for key images, sufficient contrast, a logical heading order, labelled form fields and a site that works with the keyboard alone.
Add a widget for the gaps
Install a tool such as the accessiBe widget to give visitors adjustment profiles and to cover missing descriptions and keyboard support.
Check pages on other domains
Ask your shop, booking and payment providers how their pages handle accessibility; the widget does not reach them.
Publish your accessibility information
Explain what you have done and how visitors can report barriers. In Germany, covered services also name the MLBF.
Review after each larger update
New templates, forms and campaigns are where new barriers appear.
If you want a second pair of eyes, see our overview of website compliance standards or try the accessiBe widget on your own site first.
parnii note
We use the widget on parnii.de ourselves. It saves us from the small slips that every busy team makes, like a missing description, and it lets visitors adapt a design we are fond of to their own needs. The legal part still comes from the basics: content, forms and checks after every update.
FAQ
Do small businesses in Germany need an accessible website?
Only if they offer a covered consumer service, such as an online shop or online booking, and are not a micro-enterprise. Service providers with fewer than 10 employees and no more than €2 million in turnover or balance sheet total are exempt from the BFSG.
Does the European Accessibility Act apply to businesses outside the EU?
It applies to covered services offered to consumers on the EU market, so a shop outside the EU that sells to EU consumers can be in scope. Which country's authority acts, and how high fines are, depends on national law.
Does the ADA apply to websites of private businesses?
Courts and the Department of Justice treat websites of businesses open to the public as covered by ADA Title III, but there is no federal technical standard for them and no general small-business exemption. Courts are split on businesses that exist only online.
Will an accessibility widget make my website compliant?
No tool can promise that on its own. A widget adds an adjustment menu and automated fixes, such as missing alt text and keyboard support, but content, documents, videos and pages on other domains still need checking. In 2025 about a quarter of US accessibility lawsuits named sites that had a widget.
Do I still need to write alt text if I use a widget?
For important images, yes. accessiBe's widget generates descriptions where alt text is missing and does not overwrite yours, but only you know why an image is there, for example which product variant a photo shows or what a chart proves.
This post is general information, not legal advice. Laws checked against official sources for Germany, the EU, France, Italy, Austria and the US. Last checked: 09 November 2026.
Links to accessiBe are affiliate links: we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The accessiBe widget works on the domain where it is installed and does not change content on other domains, such as third-party checkout or booking pages.
