The BaFG requires companies in Austria to make their digital offerings accessible. Here you will learn what that means in practice, who is affected and what needs to be done.
The Accessibility Act (BaFG) is Austria's national implementation of the European Accessibility Act (EAA). The goal is for digital products and services to be accessible to everyone. The first step toward compliance is knowing where your website currently stands and which barriers it has.
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Make your website accessible and avoid penalties, because the BaFG has required companies to do so since June 2025.
About 15% of the population live with a disability that makes digital access more difficult. Accessible websites reach more people.
Accessibility is more than a legal obligation. It shows that your company includes all customers.
The BaFG is aimed at companies or organizations that offer products or services to end consumers on the Austrian market. The affected categories are the same as under the European Accessibility Act:
E-commerce and online shops
Banking services for consumers
Online messaging services as well as voice and video calling
Streaming and audiovisual media services
Passenger transport services
E-books and e-book readers
PCs, notebooks, smartphones, tablets, smart TVs
Self-service terminals
Exemption for microenterprises:
Microenterprises are companies with fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover or annual balance sheet total of no more than 2 million euros.
For them the following applies: if they exclusively provide services, they are fully exempt. Microenterprises that manufacture, import or trade products are not exempt, but they benefit from simplifications.
Affected companies and organizations in Austria are required under the BaFG to offer their products and services in an accessible way.
The central obligation is the substantive implementation of accessibility. In the digital domain, the BaFG is based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), specifically on Level A and AA. WCAG 2.2 AA serves as the practical target.
The 4 principles of the WCAG are:
Content must be prepared so that it can be perceived by all users, regardless of whether they can see, hear or read. For example, through alternative text for images.
Functions and navigation must be operable in various ways, for instance by keyboard or voice control, not only by mouse or touch.
Content and operation must be clear and comprehensible, so that users understand what they are doing and what the system expects of them.
Content must be implemented technically so that it works reliably with different browsers, screen sizes and assistive technologies such as screen readers.
The four principles are divided into concrete, testable success criteria that can be used to assess the accessibility of a digital offering. Each criterion describes a measurable requirement, for example that images must have alternative text or that the color contrast between text and background must not fall below a certain minimum value.
The technical basis for implementation is the European standard EN 301 549. It defines concrete accessibility requirements for ICT products and services and references the WCAG criteria. Anyone who complies with EN 301 549 is considered compliant with the BaFG. It is therefore the practical benchmark for digital accessibility in Austria and across the entire EU.
Compliance with the BaFG is actively monitored in Austria by the Social Ministry Service (Sozialministeriumservice). It regularly checks whether products and services meet the legal accessibility requirements and can impose administrative fines for violations.
Consumers as well as organizations such as the Austrian Economic Chamber (Wirtschaftskammer) or the Austrian Disability Council (Österreichischer Behindertenrat) can also report violations.
The Accessibility Act has applied since 28 June 2025 to all products and services that are newly placed on the market or provided to consumers from that date onward. For service contracts already in progress there is a transition period: they may continue unchanged until they expire, but no later than 28 June 2030. Products that service providers were already using before 28 June 2025 may also continue to be used until 2030.
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