Accessibility in Austria: the BaFG and website practice

Not every website is covered for the same reason

What matters is the specific service. The BaFG lists, among others, electronic commerce, banking services for consumers and e-books. It therefore makes sense to check the offering against the law's scope, not just against the industry or the CMS used.

An agency should document this classification with the client. It can record the operator, the service, the target group, the countries concerned and the relevant legal basis. For mixed business models, an expert case-by-case review remains important.

Check microenterprises and transitions carefully

§ 6 BaFG exempts microenterprises that offer or provide services from the corresponding accessibility requirements and the obligations linked to them. The legal definition requires fewer than ten employees and an annual turnover or annual balance sheet total of no more than €2 million. The services exemption cannot simply be extended to trading in covered products.

Further exemptions and transitional provisions depend on the individual case. The publication date of individual content or an old contract does not automatically answer the question of all the offering's current obligations. Record your reasoned classification together with the supporting documents.

Cover the whole digital journey

For a shop, a realistic testing round includes search, product information, choosing variants, the basket and payment. For a booking, choosing a date and the confirmation are added. External payment dialogs and embedded components can also create barriers in the user journey.

Start with a list of the different page types and states. A flawless contact form in its initial state is not enough: also check required fields, error messages and successful submission. Use safe test data and a suitable test environment for this.

Public sector: telling the WZG and provincial law apart

The Web-Zugänglichkeits-Gesetz, WZG for short, applies to federal public bodies. The federal provinces have their own corresponding rules. The Sozialministeriumservice explicitly distinguishes these responsibilities from market surveillance under the BaFG. An Austrian municipality should therefore not replace its legal framework with a German BITV template.

The statement, feedback and complaint channels must also fit the specific offering. Check that the contacts can actually be reached and plan who will handle incoming reports on the subject-matter side.

A workable plan for your team

1. 1Assign the offering to the BaFG, the public-sector legal framework or other relevant requirements.
2. 2Set a traceable technical testing basis and create a sample of the most important processes.
3. 3Combine automated findings with manual tests of keyboard use, magnification and assistive technologies.
4. 4Fix blocked tasks first and retest the fixes in the same process.
5. 5Check the information required about the service, name the people responsible and keep evidence up to date.

What Accessonaut can contribute

Accessonaut supports you with the technical start, prioritised findings and documenting your work. Choosing the right legal framework and a full conformance assessment do not follow from a scan score. So alongside the scan, plan time for content review, manual testing and signing off your information.