TYPO3 Accessibility

TYPO3 has always been strongly represented in the public sector, and there accessibility has long been mandatory — well before the BFSG. We make your TYPO3 website accessible, whether you're subject to BITV 2.0 as a public authority or fall under the BFSG as a company.

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BITV 2.0: mandatory for the public sector

Germany's accessible IT regulation (BITV 2.0) has obliged federal public bodies to run accessible websites since 2011 — considerably longer than the BFSG has applied to the private sector. The federal states have largely followed with their own state BITV regulations. Affected are authorities, offices, public educational institutions and many public-law institutions — exactly the kind of multi-site and enterprise setups TYPO3 is traditionally strong in.

In substance, BITV 2.0 refers to the same technical basis as the BFSG, namely WCAG 2.1 level AA. The decisive difference lies in an additional obligation the WCAG alone doesn't know.

The accessibility statement, a BITV-specific obligation

A publicly accessible statement: BITV-obliged websites must publish an accessibility statement disclosing the degree of conformity with WCAG 2.1 AA
A feedback mechanism: the statement must offer a way to report non-accessible content, including a response deadline
An arbitration body: if feedback isn't answered satisfactorily, the responsible monitoring body can be involved. The BFSG doesn't know this procedure as such
Regular updates: if your website's conformity status changes substantially, the statement must be adjusted accordingly

We create and maintain the accessibility statement for your TYPO3 website and make sure it matches the actual technical state, not just the state of the last audit.

BFSG, for TYPO3 operators in the private sector too

Since June 2025, Germany's Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) has also obliged a large share of commercially used websites and online shops to be accessible per WCAG 2.1 AA. For many of our TYPO3 clients from the corporate environment this is relevant even if they aren't subject to the BITV, particularly with multi-site presences carrying direct B2C relevance.

There's an exemption for micro-enterprises: if you employ fewer than ten people and your annual turnover or balance sheet total is at most two million euros, as a pure service provider you're generally not obliged to be accessible. With larger corporate and multi-site structures, as we frequently look after in the TYPO3 environment, this exemption barely applies in practice.

Where TYPO3 setups typically violate accessibility

TYPO3 itself delivers a solid technical basis. The actual problems mostly arise in the custom sitepackage, in Fluid templates without semantic markup, or in editorially maintained content.

Common violations we find in audits

Fluid templates with nested div containers instead of real heading and list structures
Missing or meaningless alt texts on images, particularly in large, historically grown media libraries
Insufficient colour contrast between text and background in the sitepackage design
Content sliders and custom Extbase frontends that can't be operated by keyboard
Forms (including TYPO3 Form Framework forms) without linked labels or understandable error messages
PDF documents, frequently central on government websites, without tagging for screen readers

Contrast quickly becomes concretely measurable: WCAG level AA demands a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 between text and background; for the stricter AAA level it's 7:1. Precisely with multilingual multi-site setups, this is easily overlooked when screening per language version.

How we make TYPO3 setups accessible

We combine automated checking tools with manual tests, including keyboard operation and a screen reader. Automated scanners simply don't capture a relevant share of the WCAG criteria. The audit yields a prioritised list of concrete measures instead of an abstract points list.

What belongs to our implementation

Semantic markup in the sitepackage instead of pure Fluid divs
Colour contrasts reliably meeting WCAG AA values across all language versions
Keyboard operability for interactive elements such as sliders, menus and custom Extbase frontends
Skip links and ARIA attributes where semantic HTML alone doesn't suffice
Creating and maintaining the accessibility statement, including the feedback mechanism
Ongoing monitoring so new content doesn't undermine the accessibility again

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By the way: aceArt is an official Silver Member of the TYPO3 Association.