Austria Accessibility Laws: A Complete Guide to EAA & WCAG Compliance

Which accessibility laws and regulations apply in Austria?

Three laws set the rules. Each one covers a different slice of the economy.

Barrierefreiheitsgesetz (BaFG)

Transposes the EU's European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882) into Austrian law.

It applies to private companies selling consumer-facing digital products and services.

Web-Zugänglichkeits-Gesetz (WZG)

Covers websites and mobile apps run by public sector bodies.

It transposes the EU's Web Accessibility Directive.

Bundes-Behindertengleichstellungsgesetz (BGStG)

Older and broader — a general disability equality law.

It gives individuals a complaint route when a good or service is inaccessible, across both sectors.

Why the split matters in practice

Grouping the laws this way tells you where to look first for a given product.

BaFG governs newly placed consumer products and services — smartphones, e-banking platforms, e-commerce sites, ticket machines. WZG governs public administration websites and apps specifically, not private-sector ones.

BGStG sits underneath both. It doesn't set its own technical standard. What it does is give a person a formal conciliation channel (Schlichtungsverfahren) when accessibility fails, regardless of which technical law was actually broken.

A single organization can fall under more than one law at once. A bank's website is a private consumer service under BaFG. If that same bank later builds a portal for a public agency, that specific portal falls under WZG instead. Identify the law before you check the technical requirements.

Who must comply with Austria's accessibility laws?

Compliance depends on which side of the public–private line an organization sits on. BaFG also adds a size-based exception on top of that.

Federal public sector bodies

Ministries, federal states and municipalities are directly bound by the WZG. It applies to their websites and mobile apps by name, not by inference.

Manufacturers, importers and distributors

Companies placing consumer electronics on the Austrian market — smartphones, computers, e-readers — or self-service terminals such as ATMs, ticket machines and payment terminals.

Service providers in covered sectors

Banks, e-commerce operators, transport services and e-book providers offering consumer-facing digital services. This is separate from the product-side rules.

Micro-enterprises providing services

Fewer than 10 employees and under €2 million in annual turnover. Exempt from BaFG's service obligations. The exemption does not extend to product manufacturers of any size.

The product-vs-service exception gap

The distinction between the product exemption and the service exemption is easy to miss.

A one-person e-commerce shop can rely on the micro-enterprise exception for its own service obligations. But if that same shop imports and resells self-service terminals, the product-side requirements still apply. BaFG doesn't carry the size exception over to products.

How is the European Accessibility Act implemented in Austria?

Austria implemented the EAA through a single national law, rather than splitting it across several sector-specific rules. That's a comparatively compact approach next to some other EU member states.

The legislative timeline

• 2019 — the EAA directive is adopted at EU level.
• June 2022 — deadline for member states to transpose it into national law.
• June 2023 — Austria's parliament passes the BaFG.
• 28 June 2025 — the law takes legal effect, on the EU-wide enforcement deadline.

The technical standard behind the law

The legislative timeline set the framework. The technical substance came from a separate track.

Austria mapped the EAA's general accessibility principles onto EN 301 549, the European standard for ICT accessibility. EN 301 549 in turn incorporates WCAG success criteria for anything web- or app-based.

One track establishes who must comply. The other establishes what compliance looks like. That's why a company can check its own conformance against EN 301 549 without waiting for further guidance from the law itself.

The transition period for existing products

The June 2025 start date didn't apply the same way to everything already on the market.

Anything lawfully placed on the market before that date gets a transition period running until 28 June 2030 to bring existing offerings into line. Anything placed on the market after June 2025 has to meet the requirements immediately.

There's no grace period for new products or newly launched services — only for ones that already existed when the law took effect.

Which authority enforces accessibility laws in Austria?

Enforcement runs through a single body handling three distinct roles, rather than a separate regulator for each law.

Market surveillance

The Sozialministeriumservice (Federal Social Office), specifically its Upper Austria regional office, is the central market surveillance authority. It can request technical documentation, run test purchases, inspect business premises, and order corrective measures or market restrictions for serious or repeated non-conformance.

Monitoring

The Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) monitors public-sector website and app accessibility on an ongoing basis. It reports its findings to the European Commission, rather than handling individual complaints directly.

Complaint handling

The Sozialministeriumservice again, in a different capacity. Individuals can bring a complaint about inaccessible goods or services. That triggers a mandatory conciliation attempt (Schlichtungsverfahren) before the matter can go to civil court.

The consumer reporting channel

Consumers have a direct channel into this system. Anyone who encounters an inaccessible product or service covered by BaFG can report it to the Sozialministeriumservice's market surveillance unit. The authority then investigates and can compel information from the company involved.

This channel is what gives BaFG enforcement teeth beyond periodic audits. Most non-conformance gets flagged by the people actually affected by it, not by the regulator finding it first.

What happens if organizations do not comply?

Administrative fines

Non-compliance under BaFG carries administrative fines of up to €80,000. The actual amount scales with the severity of the violation and the size of the company involved. Smaller economic operators typically face a lower ceiling than large enterprises.

Before a fine is even on the table, the market surveillance authority usually starts with a request for corrective action. That gives the company a chance to fix the specific non-conformance identified.

Market restrictions

If a company doesn't act on that request, or the violation is serious on its own, the authority can go further than a fine. Placing a clearly non-conformant product on the market is one such case.

It can restrict or prohibit the sale of the product or service in Austria until the requirements are met. For a company depending on that revenue stream, this is a materially bigger risk than the fine itself.

Civil claims under BGStG

The BGStG route runs on a separate track from these administrative penalties. It's a discrimination-and-equality law, not a product-safety-style regulation.

A person affected by an inaccessible service can pursue a claim through the mandatory conciliation process and, if that fails, civil court. This can result in damages owed to that individual, independent of any market surveillance action the Sozialministeriumservice takes under BaFG.

What are the benefits of Austria's accessibility laws?

Reaching more of the market

Disability is common enough — and grows more common with age — that an inaccessible digital service turns away a meaningful and growing share of its own potential customer base. Building to EN 301 549 and WCAG from the outset avoids that loss, instead of discovering it after a product has already shipped.

Legal predictability instead of legal risk

Before BaFG, a private company in Austria had no single, testable standard to build toward. Exposure came mostly through the broader, harder-to-quantify BGStG discrimination route. A defined technical standard gives a company something concrete to test against and document.

Harmonization across the EU market

This matters most for companies operating in more than one country. BaFG and its German counterpart both implement the same EU directive against the same EN 301 549 standard. A product built for Austria largely meets Germany's requirements too, instead of needing a separate accessibility build per member state.

Better usability for everyone

Captions help someone in a loud environment as much as someone who is deaf. A clear, keyboard-operable checkout flow is faster for every user, not just one navigating without a mouse. That spillover is a real, if secondary, return on the work.