BFSG (German Accessibility Act)

This is not legal advice.

What does the underlying European Accessibility Act cover?

According to the European Commission, the directive applies from June 28, 2025, and member states had to transpose it by June 2022. It covers products such as computers and operating systems, smartphones, ATMs, and ticketing and check-in machines. On the services side, it lists telephony services, audiovisual media services, elements of passenger transport, consumer banking, e-books, and e-commerce. The Commission names EN 301 549 as the relevant European accessibility standard.

How does the German BFSG implement it?

Section 1(3) BFSG lists the services it covers when they are provided to consumers after June 28, 2025, including e-commerce services. Section 3(3) exempts microenterprises that provide services, defined in Section 2 No. 17 as companies with fewer than ten employees and annual turnover or a balance sheet total of no more than EUR 2 million. Section 38 contains transition rules running until June 27, 2030 for services that use products already in use before June 28, 2025.

What does this mean for SEO?

Many accessibility requirements for websites, such as text alternatives for images, a clear heading structure, and semantic HTML, touch the same parts of the code that crawlers read (assessment). No Google documentation found for this entry names accessibility as a ranking factor.

Last updated: October 7, 2026