Starting June 28, 2025, companies in Germany must make digital products and services accessible. But what if the related costs would overwhelm your business? §17 BFSG provides an exception – but only if you can prove a disproportionate burden with solid documentation.

What is §17 BFSG?

§17 of the German Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) allows economic operators not to comply with specific accessibility requirements if implementation would result in a disproportionate burden. In other words: the costs or organisational effort are not reasonably proportionate to the expected benefit or your company size.

Important: This exception is not a free pass to ignore accessibility. It comes with strict documentation requirements and, in many cases, notification duties towards the competent authority.

The 3 assessment criteria according to Annex 4 BFSG

To invoke §17 BFSG, you must assess your situation using three concrete criteria defined in Annex 4 of the law.

1. Net costs in relation to total costs

First, you must calculate what share the accessibility measures represent compared to your total operating and investment costs. For example, if bringing your website into compliance would consume around 40% of your annual budget, this may indicate a disproportionate burden.

2. Cost–benefit ratio for people with disabilities

Second, you must evaluate the estimated costs in relation to the expected benefit for people with disabilities. If you would need to invest tens of thousands of euros to reach only a very small number of additional users, this can speak against proportionality.

3. Net costs in relation to net revenue

Third, especially for smaller companies, you must compare the net costs of accessibility measures with your net annual revenue. If the measures account for a significant fraction of your yearly turnover (for example 15–20% or more), this may support the argument of a disproportionate burden.

What you specifically need to prove

Prepare written documentation

You must create a written assessment that covers all three criteria. This should include:

• Concrete cost estimates for the required accessibility measures
• Your current total costs and net revenue
• An estimation of the affected user group and the expected benefit
• A clear justification why implementation would be disproportionate for your business

Keep the documentation for 5 years

You are required to retain this documentation for five years from the last time the product was placed on the market or the service was provided. The market surveillance authority can request it at any time.

Notify the market surveillance authority

As soon as you rely on §17 BFSG, you generally need to immediately inform the competent market surveillance authority – and this applies to every EU member state in which you offer the product or service. In the area of digital accessibility, market surveillance is centralised in Germany.

Exception: Micro-enterprises (fewer than 10 employees and no more than 2 million euros annual turnover) benefit from certain reliefs in terms of notification duties.

Do you need to perform an audit beforehand?

From a legal perspective, a formal accessibility audit is not mandatory in order to rely on §17 BFSG. The law requires you to assess the disproportionate burden, document your reasoning, and present it to the authority on request – but it does not prescribe that this must be done by an external auditor.

In practice, however, there are strong arguments in favour of an audit:

• Without an audit, you often only have a rough idea which measures are needed and what they really cost.
• For the authority, a purely internal estimate is far less convincing than a structured audit report based on recognised accessibility methods.
• An audit gives you a concrete list of required measures (for example, to reach WCAG 2.1 Level AA) with associated effort and cost, which provides a solid basis for the three legal criteria.

Does it help to submit the audit result to the authority?

Yes – a documented audit report is one of the strongest building blocks of your §17 documentation. Market surveillance authorities must check whether your claim of a disproportionate burden is factually and economically justified, and they rely heavily on the documents you provide.

An audit report is particularly helpful because it:

• describes the current state of your website or application with specific accessibility barriers,
• lists the required measures to achieve compliance,
• provides effort and cost estimates for each measure,
• and thus directly supports your calculations for costs vs. total budget, revenue and expected benefit.

This significantly increases the credibility of your argument and reduces the risk that the authority considers your assessment insufficient or orders corrective actions and fines.

In practical terms, your documentation should therefore:

• include the full audit report as an attachment,
• extract and summarise the economic key figures (total cost of measures, time frame, internal vs. external effort),
• explain in a short, separate section how you derive the conclusion of a disproportionate burden from the audit results.

Practical options in the real world

• Self-check with tools: Automated scanners like axe, WAVE or Lighthouse provide an initial overview but only cover part of the issues. As the sole basis for a §17 justification, they are rather weak.
• Quick-check / light audit: A streamlined audit or “relief assessment” that identifies the main problems and roughly estimates costs – a good compromise between effort and evidential value.
• Full accessibility audit: A comprehensive manual and automated review with a detailed action plan. More expensive, but very convincing as the foundation of a disproportionate burden argument.

In short: you are not legally obliged to run an audit, but without one it is difficult to substantiate your economic reasoning in a way that will stand up to regulatory scrutiny.

Special aspects for service providers

If you provide a service, such as an online shop or a mobile app, additional obligations apply:

• You must reassess the disproportionate burden at least every five years.
• A new assessment is required whenever the service undergoes significant changes.
• Upon request from the authority, you must reassess and provide updated documentation without delay.

When the exception does not apply

Public or private subsidies

If you receive public or private funding for accessibility measures, you generally cannot rely on §17 BFSG for the same measures, because the financial burden has been reduced through these subsidies.

Lack of priority is not a reason

Arguments such as “no time”, “no know-how in the team”, or “other projects are more important” do not qualify as a disproportionate burden. Authorities tend to interpret the exception strictly and expect a well-founded economic assessment, not organisational excuses.

Practical steps: How to proceed

Step 1: Get an overview of existing accessibility barriers, using automated tools or a quick-check audit.
Step 2: Obtain concrete quotes or cost estimates for remediation (for example, to reach WCAG 2.1 Level AA).
Step 3: Calculate the ratio of these costs to your total budget, annual revenue and the expected benefit for users with disabilities.
Step 4: Document your assessment in writing, including numbers, evidence and a clear explanation of why the burden is disproportionate.
Step 5: Notify the competent market surveillance authority where required, and retain all documents for at least five years.

Conclusion: An exception with high requirements

§17 BFSG offers a real escape hatch for companies that would otherwise be disproportionately burdened by accessibility requirements. The trade-off is that you must back this up with clean numbers, robust reasoning and consistent documentation that can withstand regulatory review.

Our recommendation: Before relying on §17, explore cost‑effective technical solutions. Tools like navable can automate large parts of your accessibility improvements and significantly reduce the implementation effort – often to a level where you no longer need to argue disproportionate burden at all.