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You must inform
An accessibility statement including the four mandatory details from Annex 3 — including the responsible market surveillance authority.
BFSG · Mandatory since June 28, 2025
Accessibility in the WooCommerce shop
We examine your actual purchase process – from the filled shopping cart to checkout and any error messages. We generate the declaration according to § 14 BFSG. And we document every step so you can prove it.
What it's all about
Since June 2025, accessibility in online shops is no longer optional.
The Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) transposes the European Accessibility Act into German law. Anyone offering goods or services electronically to consumers must make their online shop accessible—and must inform consumers about this.
It is being reviewed.
The state market surveillance authority for accessibility has been actively auditing since the beginning of 2026 — and asks for documentation, not intentions.
Who it affects
Shops in the consumer goods sector. Micro-enterprises with fewer than ten employees and a maximum annual turnover of two million euros are exempt for services — but not for products.
What we won't tell you
No tool can make your shop accessible at the push of a button—and anyone who claims otherwise is selling you a risk. Automated rules only meet some of the criteria; roughly two-thirds require human intervention . Our auditor explains for each point whether they have measured it or whether you need to look. This is less convenient than a simple checkmark, but it's the standard that carries weight with an authority.
Concrete
What the inspector measures — and what he leaves to you
The standard is WCAG 2.1 at level AA, as defined by EN 301 549 for Europe. Some aspects can be measured, the rest require a pair of eyes. Both are described separately and named in the report.
Automatically measured
color contrast From text to background, source to source and color pairs, bundled so that 700 reports become a dozen decisions.
Form fields without labels Checkout, search and registration.
Images without alternative text and links without a discernible destination.
Headings that skip a level — including the heading above it.
Unnamed controls, nested buttons, locked zoom on the phone.
To be judged by you
Can an order be reviewed and corrected?, before it becomes binding?
Do the cash register's error messages help? — Do they specify which field is meant and what needs to be done?
Does the path to the customer account work using the keyboard?, from the first to the last station?
Are videos subtitled?, are operating instructions not only conveyed through the form?
The plugin guides you through these points, records your verdict with the date — and counts them. not as fulfilled, as long as no one was looking.
Free, unlimited, no account required
The auditor who sees the cash register and its contents
Most auditing tools measure a list of addresses—and therefore an empty shopping cart and an empty checkout. These are different pages than the ones where your customers are located.
- A product is added to the shopping cart. Shopping cart and checkout will then be displayed with content Measured — including error messages that appear when a required field is left blank. Classic cash register and block cash register.
- The page layout comes from what a shop really is: Homepage, shop, the largest categories, one product of each type, the right-hand pages, a search using a real product keyword, the 404 page — and the cookie notice, as a visitor encounters it.
- Your shopping cart will be set aside beforehand. and then postponed. No order can be placed during an inspection.
- The declaration pursuant to Section 14 It is generated from real data: scale, date and scope of the last inspection, and each manually assessed criterion with name and date. Empty required fields stop the generator — we do not publish placeholder text on your behalf.
- A self-writing action plan. Every review, every correction, every judgment — with date and person.
The difference in five steps
Why an address list never sees the cash register
An auditor processing addresses calls up /checkout/ and finds the message: "Your shopping cart is empty." He's measuring a page that no customer has ever used. Our auditor is following the same path your customers take.
Product
A real, purchasable product from your shop is opened and measured — once each in the simple, variable, and reduced versions, because these three construction types produce different forms.
Add to Cart
Use the official WooCommerce method to ensure a consistent session and avoid any special treatment that doesn't occur in everyday use.
Shopping cart with contents
Quantity fields, remove buttons, coupon field, subtotal — all controls that don't exist on the blank page.
Cash register with contents
Invoice fields, shipping options, payment methods, mandatory checkboxes. A distinction is made between the classic cash register and the block cash register.
The error state
Required fields are cleared and the order button is pressed. The validation rejects the order—no order can be placed—and the error message is measured as if it were received by a customer.
And the cookie notice
It sits above everything else, yet it's rarely checked. For us, it's what it is: the primary user interface element of your shop.
The mandatory information
The accessibility statement — from your data, not from a template
Section 14 of the German Federal Training Assistance Act (BFSG) requires not only an accessible shop, but also that you provide information about it. Appendix 3 to the BFSGV specifies what information must be included. It contains four pieces of information, three of which a template cannot possibly include.
What is not accessible
The areas that do not meet the requirements are named, not omitted.
Why not
The reasoning, and if applicable, the accessible alternatives you offer.
How to meet the requirements
Here we do not state intentions, but facts: the applied standard, date and scope of the last inspection, and each manually assessed criterion with name and date.
Contact and authority
Your feedback option and the market surveillance authority responsible for you — not “the responsible authority”, but the one by name.
Empty required fields will stop the generator.
If a piece of information is missing, the plugin will not generate the statement. This is not a flaw, but intentional: A statement with placeholders appears under your name and is worse than no statement at all. You can publish it as a separate page or include it as a block in your terms and conditions—versioned so that it remains traceable later what was valid when.
Was uns unterscheidet
It checks, documents, and verifies — it makes no promises.
German law, not a "generic statement"
Annex 3, letters a–d, including the name of the competent market surveillance authority. For Austria, the BaFG version applies.
Germanized alongside, not against.
Mandatory checkboxes, payment method-dependent fields, and tax information are also checked. Your legal text plugin cannot provide accessibility features—we check both together.
No overlay
We don't inject a toolbar into your shop. Overlays have already resulted in millions of dollars in fines in the US for promising compliance they didn't deliver.
Nothing leaves your server
No cloud service, no external audit interface, no telemetry, no customer data in transit. Therefore, the question of a data processing agreement does not arise.
If you don't want to do it yourself
We'll take over the route
The plugin finds and names the problem. Fixing it is manual work — and we've been doing that on WooCommerce shops since 2012.
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Setup and initial testing
We install, run the first full test and go through the report with you — in your words, not in rule abbreviations.
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Fix where it matters
Contrast, keyboard operation, form labels, the cash register. We're working on the root cause within the theme itself, not on a layer on top.
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Declaration and proof
The Section 14 declaration will be completed and published; the action log will continue. You now have something tangible.
What it costs
Transparent, and no subscription required for checking.
| Offering | Price |
|---|---|
| Test plugin Unlimited checks, generate explanations, report, basic corrections | 0 € |
| Equipment Installation, initial full inspection, completing the declaration, joint review of the report. | 49 € |
| fix Based on effort, according to the report — you see in advance what needs to be done and how much it will cost. | on request |
"On request" here doesn't mean "we'll take a look." After the initial review, we have a list where each point has a reference, a page, and a rule—and contrasting cases are grouped into color pairs, so that hundreds of reports become a dozen decisions. Based on this, we make an estimate, and you can see why. Experience shows that the majority of the effort lies in just a few areas: the theme colors, the POS forms, and the menu's keyboard navigation. Focusing on just these three often yields better results than working through the list from top to bottom.
All prices include VAT.
Frequently asked questions
BFSG and WooCommerce
Does the BFSG also apply to my small shop?
For services, micro-enterprises are exempt—those with fewer than ten employees and a maximum annual turnover of two million euros. This exemption does not apply to the sale of products . If in doubt, check rather than hoping for the best.
Will this plugin make my shop accessible?
No, and you shouldn't hire anyone who promises that. The plugin checks, names, and documents. Some issues can be corrected with a single click, but more work requires working on the theme itself.
What about overlay widgets?
An overlay places a control bar over your shop and doesn't address the underlying problem. In the US, a provider paid a million-dollar fine for this because the promised compliance wasn't achieved. We don't implement such things.
Does my customer data leave the server?
No. The audit runs entirely within your WordPress installation. There is no cloud service and no telemetry.
How long does an exam take?
A complete scan of a medium-sized shop takes a few minutes. During this time, you can see which page is currently being processed.
Is the generated statement legally sufficient?
It contains the four mandatory details from Annex 3, including the responsible market surveillance authority, and is populated using your actual test data. It does not replace a legal review of your individual case—we strongly advise you to seek such a review.
What happens if I do nothing?
The market surveillance authority can conduct its own inspections, identify deficiencies, and set deadlines; if these are not met, fines and, in extreme cases, a ban on the product being offered may be imposed. Regardless, trade associations can issue warnings. Those who can document that they are inspecting and rectifying the issues are in a significantly better position in both cases.
How often do I need to check?
There is no legally mandated deadline. However, it's advisable to check after every major change to the theme, point-of-sale system, or payment methods—this is precisely where regressions occur. The plugin will remind you if an update has been performed since the last check.
Are you looking for background information rather than implementation details? Our article "Accessibility in Online Shops — Audit and Fixes " explains in detail how an audit works, what criteria exist, and how to set priorities. This page, however, focuses on implementation.
Which shops
WooCommerce first — WordPress anyway
The tester is built for WooCommerce because the checkout process is the most difficult and important part. Everything else—homepage, categories, legal pages, search, error page—is tested the same way on any WordPress installation.
WooCommerce shops
The full suite of features, including checkout process, block pointer, and Germanized interface. This is the scenario we built for.
WordPress sites without a shop
Page verification, explanation, and log function without WooCommerce. The purchase process steps are omitted and marked as "not applicable," not as passed.
Other shop systems
For Magento, Shopware, and Shopify, we conduct manual checks as an agency—using the same standards, just without this plugin. Contact us.
Who is behind it
E-commerce agency from Tornesch near Hamburg
Storetown Media has been building and managing online shops since 2012 — WooCommerce, Magento, Shopware, and Shopify. The audit plugin arose from this work, not from a market gap: We ourselves needed a tool that measures the cash register with content, because that's precisely where our customers experience problems.
We also offer on-site visits for shops in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and the Pinneberg district. For all other locations, we work the way e-commerce already works: remotely, transparently, and with documentation.
Start with what you can measure.
Checking won't cost you anything. Only once you know what's going on is it worth discussing who will fix it.
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