Government buildings? Accessible. Train stations? Accessible. New buildings? Accessible.
So why is the place where people spend most of their time today not accessible?
For decades, the internet discriminated against people with physical and cognitive disabilities. Visual impairment, motor impairments caused by tremors, hearing impairment? Tough luck. Access to the place of unlimited possibilities and creative expression remains denied because there is no ramp between individual limitations and the website of one's own community.
It was not until 2016 that the European Union became aware of this structural failure. 27 years after Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. The EU Directive on the accessibility of websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies created a binding framework for the first time. A novelty for people with disabilities, but reality was slow to follow: another three years passed before private digital services also came into focus, and another six years until the German Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) came into force in Germany on June 28, 2025. Only then were accessibility requirements consistently extended to numerous private websites and digital services.
But what does digital accessibility actually mean?
It means that everyone - regardless of visual, hearing, motor or cognitive impairments - can perceive, operate, understand and reliably use digital content. This principle is summarized in the POUR model: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust. The technical foundation is provided by the WCAG 2.1 with its three levels of conformance: A, AA and AAA. In Germany, these requirements are made binding through BITV 2.0 and EU Directive 2016/2102, particularly for public sector bodies.
These regulations enable the more than 7.9 million people living in Germany who depend on accessible websites to have equal access to information, knowledge and communication. But the benefits do not end there. Companies also benefit: The potential target audience grows, brand perception improves, and digital services appear responsible and future-proof. Accessibility signals commitment. It shows that inclusion is not merely claimed, but actually implemented. At the same time, accessible websites are clearly structured and semantically clean, making them easier for search engines and AI crawlers to understand, easier to find and more sustainable to use.
For precisely this reason, we have consciously committed ourselves to digital accessibility. For us, it is not an add-on, but a quality characteristic of modern web development. That is why we have dedicated a separate page to the topic, where we transparently explain our approach, our measures and our commitment: https://www.econcess.de/barrierefreiheit
