One Year of the EAA and BFSG: Taylor Wessing Reviews the Record

June 28, 2025 marked the day the European Accessibility Act (EAA) and its German counterpart, the Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz (BFSG), became binding. Taylor Wessing has now published a recap and update covering the first year of enforcement — what has happened since the two regimes moved from preparation to application.

What do these laws actually govern?

The EAA is EU-wide legislation that sets accessibility requirements for products and services placed on the European market. Germany transposed it into national law through the BFSG. The scope is broad: e-commerce, banking services, telecommunications, transport, and consumer hardware all fall under obligations that, in many cases, connect back to technical standards such as EN 301 549 and, through it, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

For businesses, the practical shift since June 2025 has been a move from compliance planning to compliance proof. Companies now need to show that their digital interfaces and products meet the requirements — not merely promise improvements on a roadmap.

What does the recap cover?

Taylor Wessing's piece, titled "The EAA and BFSG: Recap and Update – What has happened in the first year since June 28, 2025," looks back at the twelve months since the deadline. The title signals two things at once:

• A retrospective: what developments, decisions, and practical effects the first year produced under both the European framework and the German implementing statute.
• An update: where the legal situation stands now, and what companies should watch going forward.

The one-year mark matters. It's the point at which regulators, market surveillance authorities, and courts have had time to act — and at which early enforcement patterns, if any, start to become visible. It's also the point at which grace periods for pre-existing contracts and services begin to matter for businesses that haven't yet closed their accessibility gaps.

Why should design and product teams care?

Accessibility legislation has moved from a niche compliance topic to a market-access question. A product or service that doesn't meet the requirements of the EAA and BFSG can, in principle, no longer be lawfully offered in the affected markets. That reframes accessibility work: it's not a quality nicety layered on at the end of a design process. It's a condition of doing business.

For teams working to WCAG-based criteria — success criterion 1.1.1 for text alternatives, 1.4.3 for contrast, 4.1.2 for name, role, and value, among others — the legal backdrop gives the work a hard edge. A failed contrast ratio stops being a design review comment and becomes a documented compliance defect.

What comes next?

Taylor Wessing's recap arrives at a useful moment: after a full year of the regime, companies can no longer treat June 28, 2025 as a future deadline to prepare for, and the coming months should show whether enforcement sharpens into a pattern businesses can plan around.