Does the accessibility obligation apply to your website — and from when?
Three sets of rules, three sets of addressees, three different dates — no wonder the answers you find don't agree. Six questions place your case; a measurement shows where your website stands today. Both as a PDF, in about a minute. Free, and no follow-up phone call.
Who benefits — and it's more people than you'd think
Accessibility sounds like a small audience. It isn't.
It's the colleague who works with a screen magnifier. The buyer who has used keyboard-only navigation since a hand injury. The customer filling in your form on the train, unable to read the contrast in direct sunlight. And everyone who is getting older — which is everyone.
Most of these people never say that something didn't work. They simply go elsewhere. That's why barriers stay unnoticed for so long: they don't generate complaints, they generate silence.
And the practical part: almost everything accessibility asks for makes a website better anyway. Clear labels, sufficient contrast, clean markup, operability without a mouse — every visitor benefits, and search engines read the same signals.
What you get
Your assessment
Which of the three sets of rules applies to you — and which explicitly does not. With the date. Where your answers don't allow a decision, that line is shown as open rather than as an assumption. We don't guess to your disadvantage.
The measurement
Your home page and up to four subpages, measured against WCAG 2.1 AA. For each finding: criterion, severity, affected elements, page. The report also names which pages were checked — so you know what the result refers to.
What to do first
Findings ordered by impact, not by their position in the source code. What affects many people comes first. On most websites, the bulk of the improvement sits in a handful of changes.
Six barriers found almost everywhere
You don't need to run a check to know the most common ones. Most websites fail on the same six points — and none of them is hard to fix.
The check finds points 1 to 4 and point 6 automatically. It does not find point 5 — that takes the tab key and five minutes. Try it before you fill in the form.
What a machine sees — and what it doesn't
An automated check is fast, thorough and incorruptible on everything that can be counted and measured: contrast values, missing attributes, incorrectly nested headings, form fields without names. It does that for five pages in a minute — faster and more completely than anyone could by hand.
What it cannot do is judge. Whether an alternative text really describes the image, whether the reading order makes sense, whether someone can reach their goal using the keyboard — you only see that by doing it.
So we'd rather say it here than in the PDF: a clean measurement result does not mean a website is accessible. It means the measurable criteria are met — a good first step, not a conclusion.
The report is a self-assessment, not a declaration of conformity. The legal assessment is based on your answers; it is guidance, not legal advice.
Why the answers you find contradict each other
If you have looked into this, you have probably come across three different answers. That isn't down to poor sources — it's because three separate sets of rules genuinely sit side by side, with different addressees and different dates.
The most common confusion is between the European Accessibility Act and Swiss law. The EAA took effect on 28.06.2025 — which turns, in many summaries, into «accessibility has been mandatory in Switzerland since June 2025». For a Swiss private company without EU customers, that is not the case.
BehiG and BehiV — the public sector, today
The Swiss Disability Discrimination Act obliges the federal government, cantons and municipalities, as well as organisations with a public mandate. For the federal government, the eCH-0059 standard is binding; version 3.0 was adopted on 21.05.2021 and is based on WCAG 2.1 level AA. Cantons and municipalities follow it to varying degrees.
In its current form, the BehiG does not cover private providers.
European Accessibility Act — companies with EU customers, since 28.06.2025
The EU directive has applied since 28.06.2025. It also affects Swiss companies — not because of where they are based, but because they serve customers in the EU single market. It mainly covers products and services with a transaction: online shops, booking systems, banking services, e-books, passenger transport.
The technical standard is EN 301 549, which refers to WCAG 2.1 AA.
Partial revision of the BehiG — private providers in Switzerland, expected from 01.01.2027
The planned partial revision is intended to oblige private providers of services to the general public for the first time. The date envisaged is 01.01.2027. Until the legislative process is complete, neither the scope nor the date is final.
Anyone planning today is planning for that date — not for one that has already passed.
The exemption most often overlooked
Microenterprises are exempt from the European Accessibility Act: fewer than 10 employees and less than EUR 2 million in annual turnover. Both conditions must apply.
For many Swiss SMEs, this single question decides whether the deadlines apply to them at all. Most summaries leave it out.
The shared standard: WCAG 2.1 AA
However different the three sets of rules are, the technical standard is the same. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, version 2.1, conformance level AA, organise the requirements under four principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, robust.
That is the practical message: anyone working to WCAG 2.1 AA satisfies all three sets of rules at once. Which one applies determines the date and the documentation duty — not what needs to be done.
This overview is guidance and does not replace legal advice. For individual cases — particularly in public tenders and when offering services in the EU — seek legal clarification.
Frequently asked questions
How long does the check take?
Confirmation is immediate; the report arrives in around a minute by email. You don't need to keep the page open.
Roughly what does it cost to fix?
That depends on what is found. Contrast, the language attribute and alternative texts are usually a matter of hours. It gets more involved when a dropdown menu or a booking flow can't be operated without a mouse — there the barrier sits in the construction, not in an attribute. The report orders the findings so you can tell the difference.
What happens to my data?
Your details are used for the check and to get in touch. They are not passed on and not sold. You receive the report and one follow-up email after seven days — nothing more. Further information in the privacy policy.
Why a business email address?
The report assesses a corporate obligation and belongs with the responsible party. Disposable addresses are declined.
Can I check my website more than once?
Once a day per address. After making changes, run it again the next day and see what has moved.
Does the check replace an audit?
No. It checks what can be checked automatically and places your legal position. For a robust statement you need a person who goes through the site with a keyboard and a screen reader.
We work with an agency — what will they do with this?
The report names the WCAG criterion and the affected elements for each finding. That's a working basis, not an assessment of your provider — and it makes the conversation concrete.
Findings are one thing, fixing them another.
If the report shows there is work to do and you don't have the time in-house, we'll take on the implementation — or check what can't be measured automatically. And if all you need is a sense of whether the effort is realistic, ask us that first.
Discuss implementation→