There are two common reactions to the Accessibility Act, and both usually miss. One: this cannot possibly apply to my small business site. The other: my website is now illegal. For most small Austrian businesses, neither is true. It comes down to a decision you can make for your own case in a few minutes. That is what this walks through.
One note up front: this is not legal advice. Where it gets close to the line, your specific situation needs checking, and if there is real doubt, by someone qualified to judge it. What this piece does is the groundwork, so you understand what is at stake and can tell whether you even need to look harder.
Does the accessibility law apply to your website?
Two things decide it: what your website lets a visitor do, and how big your business is. If a visitor can close a sale, a booking or a subscription on the site, it does the kind of thing the law names. If you employ fewer than 10 people and stay at or under € 2 million in annual turnover or balance-sheet total, the microenterprise exemption takes you back out.
The Barrierefreiheitsgesetz, BaFG for short, has been in force since 28 June 2025. It implements EU Directive 2019/882, the European Accessibility Act, for Austria. One thing worth flagging, because most search results and AI answers get it wrong: the Austrian law is the BaFG, and the consolidated text is public in the RIS legal information system. Germany has its own separate law, the Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz (BFSG). A lot of German-language coverage points at the German rules and misses the Austrian detail. If you run a business in Austria, the BaFG is the one that applies to you.
Enforcement sits with the Sozialministeriumservice, Landesstelle Oberösterreich. It is the market surveillance authority, it is where consumers can report products and services that are not accessible, and it is also the authority that imposes penalties.
Which websites does the BaFG name?
§ 2 BaFG lists the covered products and services exhaustively, and one of the entries on that list is services in electronic commerce. That entry is about the transaction your website carries out, which is why reasoning from your trade gives you the wrong answer. WKO’s guidance on the BaFG in e-commerce spells out what falls under it:
- Web shops and apps in e-commerce
- Hotel and travel portals where bookings can be made
- Online appointment booking tools
- Publishers offering digital publications
- Websites where digital memberships and subscriptions can be signed up for
The third item is the one that catches people out. WKO states plainly that online appointment booking tools are covered even where the underlying service itself would not fall under the BaFG, and gives tourism businesses selling a room directly online as its example. That is how a physiotherapy practice, a workshop or a studio ends up in scope: the law looks at the booking tool on the website, regardless of the trade behind it.
Beyond e-commerce, the law names other consumer-facing services: consumer banking, electronic communications such as calls, messaging and internet access, digital books, services that provide access to audiovisual media, and information and booking services for long-distance passenger transport.
Does a contact form put you in scope?
This is the boundary case, and the honest answer is that it is unsettled. § 3 Z 27 BaFG defines a service in electronic commerce as one supplied electronically, at a consumer’s individual request, with a view to concluding a consumer contract. A tool that closes the booking online is squarely that. A form that only asks a practice to call you back is where the argument starts, and WKO’s FAQ on the BaFG in e-commerce says so in as many words: “This question is unfortunately contested.”
The two readings WKO sets out:
| Reading | Argument | Consequence for you |
|---|---|---|
| A strict one | An interactive contact form could in theory lead to a contract or a purchase enquiry, so it is enough | The whole website falls under the BaFG |
| A narrower one | A contact form normally produces an enquiry that someone still has to work by hand before any contract exists, all the more so where the form says it takes no binding orders | The form alone does not pull the site in |
WKO closes the question by saying nobody can yet tell which reading will prevail in official checks in Austria and then across the EU, and it expects those checks to follow the advise-before-penalise principle in the meantime. Its practical tip is to build at least the contact form itself accessibly while the question stays open. That is a cheap hedge, and it is the one we would give too.
Does the size test change the answer?
WKO works the whole question through with the same business twice on its general BaFG information page, and the pair is worth reading together.
| WKO’s worked example | Covered? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A foot care business with more than 10 staff and over € 2 million annual turnover. Its site takes online appointments and sells care products. | Yes | Neither foot care nor care products appear in § 2 BaFG. The business still has to meet the requirements, because the website runs services in electronic commerce. |
| The same foot care business with 3 staff and € 800.000 annual turnover. | No | It offers exactly the same services in electronic commerce and is out anyway, because it is a microenterprise. |
Who is exempt: the microenterprise exemption
You are exempt as a microenterprise if you employ fewer than 10 people and also stay under the money line: at most € 2 million in annual turnover, or at most € 2 million in balance-sheet total. Either of those two figures is enough. If you provide a service, which is what a website normally does, § 6 (1) BaFG exempts you from the accessibility requirements and from every obligation that goes with meeting them.
Both conditions have to hold. The headcount test and the money test:
| Test | Exemption applies | Exemption does not apply |
|---|---|---|
| Employees | fewer than 10 | 10 or more |
| Annual turnover or balance-sheet total | at most € 2 million (either figure qualifies) | both above € 2 million |
If the left column is true on both rows, you are exempt as a microenterprise for your service. The moment one row flips to the right, meaning 10 or more employees, or turnover and balance-sheet total both above € 2 million, the exemption no longer holds.
Counting the people has its own rules, and they matter once the size test is doing the work. WKO points at the EU’s SME definition: the figure is annual work units, so a full-year full-time position counts as one, part-timers and anyone employed for only part of the year count pro rata, and apprentices do not count at all. A studio with twelve part-timers can land well under ten.
One distinction that rarely gets drawn cleanly: this full exemption is for services. The few businesses that place a covered product on the market, self-service terminals or e-book readers for example, only get lighter administrative obligations. For a typical company website the service category is the one that matters, and that is where the full exemption sits.
Does the exemption settle the question for good?
Only for the BaFG. A second Austrian law is in play: the Bundes-Behindertengleichstellungsgesetz (BGStG) bars discrimination against people with disabilities and covers websites that supply goods and services, webshops included. WKO answers the question directly, and the answer is yes, accessibility can still be required of a business the BaFG exempts.
The BGStG carries its own escape hatch, and it is a softer one than the BaFG’s: it gives way where accessibility would be a disproportionate burden, usually a financial one, judged with the company’s economic capacity in mind. A breach is handled under civil law, through conciliation proceedings and possible damages claims. Worth knowing before you close the tab on the strength of the microenterprise exemption alone.
What if you grow past the line?
The exemption describes where you are now, and it travels with your headcount and your turnover. WKO makes the practical point directly: webshops belonging to microenterprises are exempt, but if the business grows, changing the shop after the fact is likely to be more work than building it accessibly from the start. If you are anywhere near 10 people or near the € 2 million mark, that is worth knowing before you commission a rebuild, because the cheap moment to handle this is while you are already paying someone to touch the site.
What does “accessible” actually mean for a website?
Accessible means people with vision, hearing, motor, or cognitive impairments can use your site. The BaFG handles the technical side by reference. It sets out accessibility requirements and lets you meet them by applying the harmonised European standards whose references are published in the EU Official Journal, in full or in part, which gives you a presumption of conformity under § 5 BaFG.
The conformance levels live in that standard, EN 301 549, which is why the statute itself never names one. The current published version is v3.2.1, the one WKO points to, and it brings in WCAG 2.1 at Levels A and AA. That is the bar you clear by meeting the standard. An update folding in WCAG 2.2 has reached final draft at ETSI, expected as v4.1.1. WKO recommends working to WCAG 2.2 already. We build to A and AA and keep 2.2 in view, which is the direction the standard is heading.
One link in that chain is still missing. No harmonised standard has yet been cited in the Official Journal for the BaFG. The v3.2.1 reference published there was made under Directive 2016/2102, the EU rules for public sector websites, and v3.2.1 itself carries no annex tying it to the European Accessibility Act that the BaFG implements. So the § 5 presumption of conformity has nothing to attach to yet, and the v4.1.x line, which does address the Accessibility Act, is what is expected to change that. Building to EN 301 549 stays the sensible professional bar and it is what we do. The statutory safe harbour arrives with the citation.
Plenty of confident write-ups compress all of that into “the BaFG requires WCAG 2.1 AA”. That skips a step. The level arrives through the standard and the presumption of conformity, which is why it moves when the standard moves.
In practice it comes down to a short set of fundamentals, none of which asks you to read a line of code:
- Images carry a text alternative a screen reader can announce.
- Text and background have enough contrast to stay readable with weaker sight.
- The whole site works from the keyboard, without a mouse.
- Form fields are clearly labelled, so it is obvious what goes where.
- The layout follows a logical structure with real headings, not just large text.
What information do you have to publish?
If the law does reach you, there is a second duty that rarely gets mentioned in the same breath as the fixes. Under § 14 (2) BaFG you have to publish information on how your service meets the accessibility requirements, and the contents are set out in Annex 3 of the law. In practice that is a page on your site, comparable to the accessibility statements public bodies have published for years. WKO is specific that it should also document which parts of your site are not accessible, or only partly accessible, with a concrete reason for each.
If you are exempt as a microenterprise, the duty never arises. WKO puts it plainly: this information is needed only where the website falls within the scope of the BaFG.
What happens if you ignore it?
If you are in scope and do nothing, administrative fines of up to € 80.000 are possible, with lower maximums for small and medium-sized companies and for microenterprises. In practice, though, the first step is rarely a fine.
The first year bears that out. The Österreichischer Behindertenrat reported in June 2026, citing figures from the Sozialministerium, that 84 proceedings had been opened since June 2025 and 48 reports checked, with 74 proceedings still open and a heavy concentration in banking. No administrative fines had been imposed at that point. The explanatory notes to the law also single out the principle of advising before penalising for a first or minor breach.
That takes the panic out of it. Proceedings are running and market surveillance is working through them, so if you are clearly in scope, handle it before a complaint arrives.
Why accessibility pays off even when you are exempt
Even where the law does not force you, there is a plain practical reason to do it anyway. The same flaws that stall a screen reader also block people who would have bought from you: missing labels, weak contrast, forms you can only complete with a mouse.
The state of the web is sobering. In the February 2026 WebAIM Million analysis, 95.9% of the top one million home pages had detectable WCAG 2 failures, averaging 56 errors per page. Low-contrast text alone showed up on 83.9% of home pages, up from 79.1% a year earlier. At that rate, broken accessibility is the norm, which is what makes getting it right a way to stand out.
WKO’s own conclusion is the one worth carrying over: accessibility on the web is better treated as an ongoing process, partly because the technical standards keep developing and whether a service still meets them has to be re-evaluated at least every five years. Cleanly built, well-structured pages are also faster, easier to read, and easier for search engines to parse. It is the same build quality that keeps a site from being too slow.
What to do next
Before you hire anyone, sort out your own situation:
- Look at what your website lets a visitor do. Can someone conclude a purchase, a booking or a subscription on it? If the only interactive element is an enquiry form, you are in the contested case above.
- Work out your headcount in annual work units, apprentices left out, and look at turnover and balance-sheet total. Are you under 10 people and at or under € 2 million on either figure?
- If you are in scope or unsure, have your specific case checked, with qualified advice if there is real doubt. It cannot be settled with a blanket rule.
- If you are in scope, plan the conformity information alongside the technical fixes. It is a separate deliverable and easy to forget.
- Regardless of all that, walk through the five fundamentals above once: alt text, contrast, keyboard use, labelled forms, clean structure.
- Work out who keeps it that way. Accessibility is a state that has to survive every change you make.
That last point is the one most people underestimate. A site that is clean today can regrow gaps after the next image added without alt text, or the next poorly contrasted button. That is exactly the invisible work that starts after launch and belongs to no one under a one-off project. It is also the kind of thing that never appears in a quote, which is worth thinking about before you sign one: we walked through the questions nobody asks before ordering a website separately. Under an ongoing plan the maintenance is part of the deal, and you can see what that covers in our plans and pricing.
Accessibility does not stand on its own here. It sits alongside the other legal duties of a business website and general build quality, and both stay current only if someone maintains them. If you are unsure whether this affects you, the common questions are answered in our FAQ. If your own answer lands anywhere near the line, get advice on your specific case.