Accessibility testing: the most important tools for the BFSG 2025

Accessibility becomes mandatory – BFSG 2025

By now at the very latest, digital accessibility is no longer a nice-to-have but a legal necessity. In June 2025, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) comes into force across the EU – and at the same time, the Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz (BFSG, German Accessibility Strengthening Act) becomes binding for many companies in Germany. The BFSG thus makes compliance with WCAG at levels A + AA mandatory. In concrete terms, this means that websites and apps through which products or services are offered to consumers must be accessible from 28 June 2025. The underlying standards are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 Level AA and the harmonised European standard EN 301 549, which sets out these requirements in detail. Companies that ignore these requirements risk not only a loss of reach but also legal consequences such as fines.

The challenge for web agencies

For web agencies, the new legal situation means that accessibility will have to be considered and tested in every client project from now on. Until now, it was primarily public bodies – such as government authority websites – that were obliged by the BITV (German Barrier-Free Information Technology Ordinance) to have accessible websites. Now the private sector is following suit: from e-commerce and banking to travel portals, many services will have to meet the WCAG and EN 301 549 criteria within a few months. Agencies face the task of aligning their development processes and quality controls accordingly. The good news: digital accessibility can be tested and ensured efficiently with the right tools. What is more, ultimately all users benefit from a more accessible website – better-structured content, greater usability and often better SEO rankings are positive side effects.

Automated testing tools: finding barriers quickly

An important first step towards accessibility is automated testing. There are numerous tools for this that analyse the source code and structure of a website and track down known accessibility problems. Such accessibility checkers test, for example, whether images have alt texts, whether form fields have labels, whether sufficient colour contrast is maintained and whether the HTML structure is semantically correct. Many of these tools come as browser extensions or are already built into developer tools. Chrome, for example, offers Lighthouse, an integrated audit tool that, among other things, provides an accessibility rating and concrete to-dos. Firefox, in turn, has an Accessibility Inspector that lets developers display contrasts, tab orders and simulated visual impairments. Standalone browser plugins such as WAVE, axe DevTools or ARC Toolkit also show a page's accessibility issues directly in the browser at the click of a button – colour-coded and with explanations of which WCAG success criteria are violated. These automated tests run within seconds and provide a quick overview. For editorial teams or web designers, such tools are ideal for spotting and fixing obvious barriers while content is still being created. But be careful: not every tool finds every problem. It is often worth combining several scanners, as each tool has a different focus. In larger projects, comprehensive audit platforms such as Siteimprove or Monsido are also used. These can crawl entire websites regularly and report which pages still contain WCAG violations – including history tracking, prioritisation and team-wide reports. For agencies with many client websites in particular, such services provide a central overview of the accessibility status of all the sites they look after.

Manual tests: indispensable for full compliance

As helpful as automated checkers are, they are far from catching everything. Studies show that even with a combination of several tools, only around 30–40% of the accessibility problems on an average website are found. The remaining hurdles can only be uncovered through manual testing. This includes, for example, the keyboard test: can the page be operated fully using only Tab, Enter and the like? Does the focus outline reach all interactive elements in a logical order? No automated process checks such aspects satisfactorily, yet they are essential for users without a mouse (WCAG success criterion 2.1.1). Testing with screen readers is just as important. Tools such as the free NVDA screen reader or its widely used commercial counterpart JAWS read the website aloud to blind users – and in doing so mercilessly expose missing alternative texts, incorrectly marked-up headings or illogical forms. Developers should also test on mobile devices, e.g. with VoiceOver on the iPhone, to make sure that apps and responsive websites are accessible there too. Some quality criteria can only be judged by people: is the link text understandable? Does an image caption describe the content meaningfully, or is an alt text needed? Are error messages not only highlighted in colour but also conveyed in text? These subtleties escape automated tools. That is why the rule is: automated tests are no substitute for a human tester. They are a valuable tool for pre-filtering, but for 100% WCAG conformance a manual check must always follow.

Conclusion: combination is the key to success

To meet the new legal requirements, agencies should establish a practical testing process. Automated tools provide valuable support here: they quickly identify the most serious problems and give clear pointers as to where improvements are needed. Using several scanners together significantly increases the proportion of errors found. But only a subsequent manual check by an experienced tester ensures that really all barriers – whether technical or content-related – are identified and removed. Web agencies should train their developers and editors accordingly and make the tools presented here a firm part of their workflow. In this way, the legal obligation becomes an opportunity: namely to build better, more inclusive websites that exclude no one and are, at the same time, future-proof against cease-and-desist letters and fines. So the motto is: test, check and optimise now – continuously and with the right tools at hand!