BFIT-Bund's Second EU Monitoring Report — Tracking Digital Accessibility Across German Public Bodies

Under the EU Web Accessibility Directive ((EU) 2016/2102), Germany's Überwachungsstelle des Bundes für Barrierefreiheit von Informationstechnik (BFIT-Bund), an independent Berlin-based unit, monitors federal and Länder public-sector websites and apps against BITV 2.0 and EN 301 549/WCAG 2.1.

To track, cycle over cycle, whether German public-sector digital accessibility is actually improving, and to identify where compliance and accessibility-statement quality still fall short.

For its second reporting cycle (1 January 2022 – 22 December 2024), BFIT-Bund and the Länder monitoring bodies tested 7,239 websites (322 in depth) and 269 apps — more than triple the 1,892 websites (130 in depth) and 57 apps tested in the first cycle (2020/21). BFIT-Bund also runs mandatory repeat inspections covering at least 10% of the previous cycle's sample, per EU rules.

Not a single tested website or app fully met all accessibility requirements in either cycle. Website compliance with the four WCAG principles ranged from 51% (robustness) to 82% (understandability and operability); in-depth app monitoring found robustness as low as 37.5%. State-level bodies had the highest average compliance (74%, up marginally from 73%). Publication of the legally required accessibility statement rose from 36% to 48% of sites, but only 13.5% of statements fully met the formal requirements. Repeat inspections of previously tested sites found "in most cases no significantly improved results."

BFIT-Bund attributes the limited progress largely to the long development and update cycles of public websites and apps — a structural constraint on how quickly statutory monitoring alone can raise compliance, even at a tripled testing scale.