Accessibility - Preparing for 2025

From July 2025, many companies in Germany will have to comply with accessibility standards for the first time - those who ignore this risk fines of up to 100,000 euros or sales bans. The problem: the existing standards consist of hundreds of test criteria for testers, but designers and developers will not find any concrete instructions for their everyday work in them. If you only add accessibility at the end, you pay twice - in software testing, it quickly becomes apparent that subsequent adaptations can break the architecture.

Podcast Episode: Accessibility - Preparing for 2025

The implementation of accessibility standards from 2025 presents companies in Germany with new challenges and opportunities. The new Accessibility Reinforcement Act (BFSG) affects a wide range of products and services. The focus is on practical aspects of implementing accessible websites and digital products, including the difficulties that designers and developers often experience. Andrea and Franziska will provide insights into their research and development of guidelines and to-do lists to simplify and improve the process of complying with accessibility standards for all stakeholders.

“The later I integrate accessibility, the more expensive it becomes.” - Franziska Kroneck, Andrea Nutsi

Franziska Kroneck is currently working as a UX Consultant at msg Systems and completed her Master of Science in User Experience Design in 2023. During her studies, she gained valuable experience in the field of UX as a working student for over five years. As a hearing aid user, creating accessible designs is particularly important to her, a topic that was also the focus of her master’s thesis.

Dr. Andrea Nutsi has been working as a Senior UX Consultant at msg systems ag since 2018, focusing on user research and user testing across all industries. In addition to project assignments, she enjoys working on innovation projects. One of her favorite topics is the collection and further development of the UX maturity analysis. With her academic background (diploma, doctorate) in media informatics, she also enjoys supervising student projects and giving presentations at IT and UX conferences.

Highlights der Episode

• From July 2025, companies face fines of up to 100,000 euros for lack of accessibility.
• The later accessibility is integrated, the more expensive - subsequent adaptations may require new development.
• Developers feel left alone: they are supposed to save what designers have previously messed up.
• Test criteria help testers, but designers need concrete tasks instead of abstract success criteria.
• 29-40 tasks cover hundreds of standards - overlaps make accessibility more manageable than expected.

How companies can prepare for the 2025 Accessibility Act

In this podcast episode, I discuss with my guests Andrea Nutsi and Franziska Kroneck the topic of accessibility and its growing importance for companies from 2025 onwards. We look at the challenges, the new legal requirements and the practical steps for implementing accessible practices in software development.

The urgency of accessibility

In today’s podcast episode, we talk about a topic that will affect many companies from 2025: accessibility. I discuss with Franziska and Andrea why this topic is now more relevant than ever and how companies should prepare for it. With the BFSG law on the horizon, companies in Germany will have to comply with accessibility standards for the first time from July 2025. The consequences for non-compliance are significant, including fines of up to 100,000 euros.

What does accessibility mean?

Accessibility is a concept that is not yet fully understood by many. Andrea explains it quite simply: a website or digital application must be easy and uncomplicated to use, regardless of a user’s limitations or disabilities. Examples of barriers can be text that is too small, making it difficult for people with visual impairments to read.

Challenges during implementation

The biggest challenges lie not only in the technical implementation, but also in awareness and understanding within the team. UX designers and developers are often the key players in the implementation of accessibility standards, but often feel left alone. This is often because there is a lack of clear guidance on how to integrate these standards into design and development processes from the outset.

Development of a guideline

To counteract these challenges, Franziska and Andrea set out to find solutions. Their aim was to develop a simple and practicable guideline that could be seamlessly integrated into existing processes. By looking at various norms and standards, they began to derive specific tasks for designers and developers. These should help to take accessibility aspects into account early on in the development process.

Practical examples for tasks

One example of such a task is ensuring the usability of a website using a keyboard. This requires close collaboration between product owners, UX designers and developers - from the provision of budget and time for familiarization with the topic to the definition of navigation and implementation in the code.

Outlook and recommendations for action

Finally, we discuss the importance of integrating accessibility practices at an early stage. The later accessibility is considered, the higher the cost of potential changes. We therefore encourage all stakeholders to address the issue now and offer our support. For more information, we recommend contacting us via the show notes of our podcast.