The Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) has now been in force for over a year. While many companies viewed June 2025 with concern and regarded accessibility purely as an annoying legal compliance requirement, digital practice paints a completely different picture: Accessible websites simply sell better.
Accessibility does not only affect a “minority”
A widespread misconception is: “Our target audience does not need accessibility.” Reality looks different. Accessibility affects three groups of users:
- Permanent impairments: People with visual, hearing, motor or cognitive impairments.
- Temporary impairments: Someone with a broken arm, dilated pupils after an eye examination, or a lost pair of glasses.
- Situational impairments: A smartphone user in bright sunlight (poor contrast), a commuter on a noisy train without headphones (needs subtitles), or a stressed parent who wants to order a product with only one free hand while carrying a child.
The 3 Levers: How Accessibility Increases Your Conversion Rate
How does accessible design actually become a driver of revenue? Four UX mechanisms make the difference:
A. Keyboard accessibility & seamless checkouts
Many power users, as well as people with motor impairments, navigate your online shop exclusively via keyboard or voice control. If the checkout button cannot be reached using the Tab key or the focus state remains invisible, the purchasing process comes to an abrupt halt. An accessible form and checkout process significantly reduces the drop-off rate in the shopping cart.
B. Clear contrasts and readable typography
Good readability prevents cognitive fatigue (Cognitive Load). When color combinations comply with WCAG 2.1 AA standards and fonts are clearly scalable, users can grasp your product benefits more quickly. The result: trust increases and bounce rates decrease.
C. Clean semantics = Better Core Web Vitals & SEO
Accessible web design is based on clean, semantic HTML (<header>, <main>, <button>, logical <h1>-<h3> hierarchies). Screen readers depend on this structure – but so do search engine crawlers and AI bots. Lean, well-structured code improves loading times (Core Web Vitals) and provides Google with exactly the signals needed for top rankings.
The Side Effect: SEO & AI Readiness
In an era of Generative Search and AI assistants, structured content is becoming increasingly valuable. An algorithm essentially reads your website in much the same way as a screen reader: It relies on code, alt texts, ARIA labels and logical content structures.
Future AI shopping agents and voice assistants will preferentially access and analyze online shops whose data is cleanly structured and accessible.
From Obligation to Opportunity: The econcess Approach
Accessibility cannot simply be “added on” to an existing website afterwards (so-called Accessibility Overlays often fall short technically and do not solve the underlying problem).
At econcess, we embed accessibility into the development process from the very beginning (Accessibility by Design):
- Audit & Analysis: We assess your existing website or shop for WCAG compliance and vulnerabilities.
- Accessible Components: Whether TYPO3, Shopware or a headless architecture – we develop accessible frontend components.
- UX & Design System: We design interfaces that are both visually appealing and accessible.
Conclusion
The Accessibility Strengthening Act has established the framework, but the real benefit lies in the user experience: An accessible website is faster, easier to understand, more visible on Google, and easier to use for 100% of your visitors.
Would you like to know how accessible your digital platform currently is, or are you planning an accessible redesign?
Talk to our UX and development team in Munich/Unterföhring – we will support you from analysis through to implementation.
