Creating a Legally Sound Accessibility Statement

1. Why an accessibility statement is legally required

Since June 28, 2025, the German Barrierefreiheitsstaerkungsgesetz (BFSG), the national implementation of the European Accessibility Act (EAA), obligates providers of certain products and services to make their digital offerings accessible and to publicly document that state. Affected sectors include e-commerce websites, banking services, e-books, and passenger transport services. An accessibility statement is not an optional extra, it is a document with a concretely prescribed minimum content.

The decisive difference to a classic marketing claim like "we care about accessibility" lies in its binding nature: a legally sound accessibility statement must name the actual conformance status, specify concrete exceptions, and provide a channel for complaints. If the statement is drafted incorrectly, incompletely, or misleadingly, this risks not only cease-and-desist letters from competitors but also objections from the responsible market surveillance authorities of the federal states. The following sections show how an accessibility statement should be structured in content, wording, and technical implementation so it withstands legal scrutiny while genuinely helping users.

2. The mandatory content under BFSG and EAA

A complete accessibility statement follows the structure and content of EU Directive 2016/2102 as well as the German Barrierefreie-Informationstechnik-Verordnung (BITV 2.0), which many market surveillance bodies rely on when assessing BFSG cases. Mandatory components include: the scope of the statement (which website, which app, which time period), the applied standard, typically WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the current conformance status, a list of known limitations with justification, a feedback mechanism for complaints, and details on the creation date and the last review.

In addition, the BFSG requires an assessment of whether full implementation would constitute a disproportionate burden in cases of non-conformance, if the company relies on this exception. This assessment must be comprehensibly justified and referenced within the statement, even if the full analysis is documented internally. If any of these building blocks is missing entirely, the statement is regularly considered incomplete in practice, and therefore a violation of the law's information duties, regardless of how accessible the website actually is.

<!-- Basic skeleton of an accessibility statement as its own CMS page -->
<section aria-labelledby="a11y-heading">
  <h1 id="a11y-heading">Accessibility Statement</h1>

  <p>
    This statement applies to the online store
    <a href="https://mironsoft-shop.de">mironsoft-shop.de</a>
    (web and mobile view) and was created on July 12, 2026.
  </p>

  <h3>Compliance status</h3>
  <p>
    This website is <strong>partially compliant</strong> with
    BITV 2.0 and WCAG 2.1 Level AA. The exceptions are
    listed in the following section.
  </p>

  <h3>Non-accessible content</h3>
  <ul>
    <li>The product configurator has limited keyboard operability (WCAG 2.1.1).</li>
    <li>Some embedded PDF datasheets from third-party feeds are not tagged (WCAG 1.1.1).</li>
  </ul>
</section>

3. Formulating the conformance status correctly

The conformance status is the core of the accessibility statement and must not be sugarcoated. The EU directive and BITV 2.0 recognize three tiers: "fully compliant," "partially compliant," and "not compliant." The vast majority of real-world websites, including technically well-maintained Magento and Hyvä stores, correctly fall into the "partially compliant" category, because practically every complex website has residual issues somewhere, for example in third-party widgets, legacy PDF documents, or complex interactive components like product configurators.

The most common mistake is the phrase "fully accessible" or "WCAG compliant" without a current audit backing it up. This statement is a verifiable factual claim under competition law. If an audit reveals that basic functions such as the checkout form are not keyboard operable, the claim is demonstrably false and thus a classic basis for a competition-law cease-and-desist claim. Realistic and legally sound instead is a precise, honest classification: which standard was reviewed, with which method, and what was the result of the review.

4. Documenting known limitations honestly

The list of known limitations is the section that distinguishes an accessibility statement from a pure marketing claim. Each limitation should contain three pieces of information: which WCAG success criterion is affected, which concrete part of the website is affected, and, if known, by when a fix is planned. Blanket phrases such as "some areas are not yet fully accessible" without further specification do not fulfill the information duty and are regularly flagged by market surveillance authorities.

For Magento stores, typical honest entries include: embedded videos without captions in older content blocks, PDF catalogs from manufacturers that lie outside the company's own control, or a third-party chat widget whose focus management does not meet the company's own standards. It is important to distinguish between limitations that can be fixed in-house and those caused externally, and, where possible, to point out third-party responsibility for external content, without fully absolving oneself of responsibility, since embedding that content remains an editorial decision of its own.