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Very few companies in Europe have paid much attention to the topic of “accessible websites” to date, and we at decareto are no exception. To change this, the European Commission has passed the “European Accessibility Act” (EAA), which aims to make everyday products and services accessible to people with disabilities. This means that accessibility will become a serious compliance issue for many companies from June 2025 at the latest, and we would like to provide helpful tips and guidance on this topic in this series of articles. In this article, we describe the most important basics for accessible websites.
Is accessibility a legal requirement?
In Europe, the websites of public institutions must be accessible; this is defined in the “Web Accessibility Act”. This is transposed into national law by the European member states. From June 2025, the accessibility obligation will also apply to the private sector, as the European Accessibility Act (also transposed into national law) will then apply.
In the USA, website accessibility is stipulated by the Americans with Disabilities Act, which has been in force since 1990 and provides for severe fines.
Are there other reasons to make a website accessible?
It is not only advisable not to exclude people with disabilities from using your website due to legal obligations or compliance. Rather, it is in the company's own interest to design accessible websites for a whole range of other reasons.
Increasing the reach
The European Commission estimates that 87 million people with disabilities will benefit from the European Accessibility Act. An accessible website is available to people with visual, hearing or motor impairments, thereby increasing its reach and potentially also its customer base.
Improved usability
The accessibility requirements not only benefit people with disabilities, as they enforce consistent navigation, clearly visible buttons and a clean structure. This leads to better usability for everyone.
Better SEO-Ranking
Google and other search engines prefer accessible websites. This is due to the following reasons:
- Good usability leads to a lower bounce rate and longer dwell time
- A clear structure of the HTML code makes it easier to crawl and index the content
- Accessible websites are designed for use with screen readers, which improves your visibility in voice searches
- Search engines appreciate conformity to standards such as WCAG
- Accessibility often also means shorter page load times, which benefits SEO
Strengthening image and brand perception
If your company takes inclusion and accessibility seriously, it will be perceived as responsible and progressive. This is particularly important for companies above a certain size or in regulated markets.
Which companies are required to make their website accessible?
The European Accessibility Act applies between traders and consumers and affects both products and services. They are affected in the following cases, among others:
- If you are a manufacturer, importer or retailer of digital products such as smartphones, ebook readers, ATMs or internet-enabled televisions.
- If you provide services such as telephone services or passenger transportation. In particular, “electronic commerce” is affected, which means not only online stores but also bookings of all kinds (including online appointment bookings) and comparable interactions.
The law provides for some exceptions, for example with regard to content that was created before the deadline of June 28, 2025, and under certain conditions it does not apply to “micro-enterprises”; if in doubt, you should consult a lawyer.
If a website is operated by a public body, or if something can be purchased or a business transaction can be initiated on the website, then it must presumably be implemented in an accessible manner.
What does accessibility on websites mean?
Non-accessible websites exclude people with a visual impairment in particular:
- Blind people use screen readers that read out the content of a website. In Windows, the “Narrator” is pre-installed, in MacOS there is “Voiceover”. Interaction takes place via the keyboard without the aid of a mouse. The website must be programmed in such a way that this is possible without any problems, as many elements in websites make it difficult to use screen readers (such as sliders and links and images without comprehensible labels) or must be specially adapted for this, such as input forms. Keyboard operation also benefits people with motor impairments.
- People with severely impaired vision may not need a screen reader, but they do need the ability to enlarge the text on the page, which does not work on all pages, and they need sufficient contrast in the color scheme.
- Blind and deaf people can only use videos if there is a transcript or subtitles.
Other accessibility requirements include simple language (for people with a cognitive impairment) or the use of color (for people with a red-green impairment).
The generally used and internationally accepted standard for accessibility on websites is described in the “W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines”, which are currently available in version 2 and are based on 13 guidelines.
- Perceptible
- Provide text alternatives for all non-text content so that it can be changed to other forms required by the user, such as large print, Braille, symbols or simpler language.
- Provide alternatives for time-based media.
- Create content that can be presented in different ways (for example, with a simpler layout) without losing information or structure.
- Make it easier for users to see and hear content, including separation between foreground and background.
- Operable
- Ensure that all functionalities are available from the keypad.
- Give users sufficient time to read and use content.
- Do not design content in ways that are known to cause seizures.
- Provide means to help users navigate, find content and determine where they are.
- Make it easier for users to use input devices other than keyboards.
- Understandable
- Make text content readable and understandable.
- Make web pages look and function predictably.
- Help users to avoid and correct errors.
- Robustness
- Maximize compatibility with current and future user agents, including assistive technologies.
The effort required to implement or adapt a website in accordance with the guidelines should not be underestimated, we will go into more detail in the following articles. The WCAG provides for three levels of conformity (A to AAA), which require varying degrees of effort to implement.
How can a website be checked for accessibility?
Checking a website for accessibility should always be a combination of manual and automated tests - in this regard, it’s similar to checking for data protection compliance.
Automated tests can check technical aspects and the programming of the website in particular, i.e. topics such as color contrast, alternative texts, keyboard operation, etc. Since clean programming in compliance with the WCAG standards is crucial for accessible use, many errors can be found very quickly through automation.
On the other hand, certain errors can only be poorly detected by automated tests, such as whether all navigation elements can be reached via the keyboard, whether alternative texts make sense, or whether the visible order on the page corresponds to the structure of the HTML code.
A good evaluation by automated tests is therefore a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for accessibility.
Free accessibility testing tools include WAVE (https://wave.webaim.org/) or Lighthouse, which is part of the developer tools in every Chrome browser. Such tools can be used to test individual pages, but they do not provide any information on which errors are found on multiple pages and do not allow continuous monitoring.
These options are currently only available with very high-priced products. From 2025, decareto Compliance Monitoring will offer automated testing of an entire website at a fraction of the cost of comparable tools.
