FFG Monitoringstelle des Bundes — Austria's Multi-Year Digital Accessibility Monitoring with Disability-Led Testing

Austria's Web-Zugänglichkeits-Gesetz transposes EU Directive 2016/2102, and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) runs the federal monitoring body (Monitoringstelle des Bundes) that checks whether public sector websites and mobile applications actually meet EN 301 549 / WCAG. The Monitoringbericht 2024 covers the periods 2022, 2023 and 2024 (data collected 1 January 2022 to 2 December 2024) and was submitted to the European Commission.

In the 2024 period the FFG carried out 23 in-depth website checks (390 pages), 343 simplified website checks (roughly 4,800 pages) and 15 in-depth app checks (230 screens).

The headline finding is a genuine multi-year improvement. The share of audited websites fulfilling less than 50% of the applicable WCAG criteria fell from 51% in the 2020/2021 period to 39% in 2022, 13% in 2023 and 9% in 2024. The average number of unfulfilled criteria per site fell from 25 to 20 over the same span.

The report is equally clear about what has not been achieved. In 2022, 2023 and 2024 alike, not a single audited website was fully conformant — the figure recorded for "vollständig vereinbar" is 0% in every period. Publication of accessibility statements has stagnated at between 51% and 57% (57% in 2024), meaning over four in ten public bodies still do not publish the declaration the law requires. The nine most persistently failed criteria across all three periods are 1.1.1 Non-text Content, 1.3.1 Info and Relationships, 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum), 1.4.11 Non-text Contrast, 2.1.1 Keyboard, 2.4.3 Focus Order, 2.4.7 Focus Visible, 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value and 4.1.3 Status Messages — a stable list that points to design and development habits rather than one-off defects.

The methodological point worth transferring is that disability organisations are not merely consulted at the end. BIZEPS and other advocacy bodies took part in selecting the monitoring sample and in the testing itself, including blind and visually impaired testers, which grounds the compliance figures in lived use rather than automated checks alone.

Caution: the sample is small (23 in-depth website checks in 2024) and the improvement is measured against a low bar — "fulfils at least half the criteria" is not accessibility. The trend is real and independently reported, but a 9% failure rate on that threshold coexists with a 0% full-conformance rate.

Read the full analysis: https://monitoringbericht2024.digitalbarrierefrei.at/ergebnisse/entwicklung