A document stock grows over years: brochures as office files, training videos from the time before the cloud, press releases going back two decades, a map on the contact page, a review window in the footer. Anyone holding that stock against the German Accessibility Act for the first time expects a number nobody enjoys signing off. Before that number appears, Section 1(4) BFSG is worth reading. It lists five types of content the act expressly does not apply to. The list is not a loophole, it is an inventory tool: it splits a grown stock into two piles, and the pile that has to be remediated is usually far smaller afterwards. A WCAG audit therefore starts with counting, not with fixing.
Key takeaways
- Section 1(4) BFSG lists five types of content the act does not apply to: old time-based media, old office file formats, online maps under one condition, third-party content outside your control, and archives.
- Two of those exemptions hang on the cut-off date 28 June 2025. What counts is the date of publication, not the day someone last opened the file.
- The archive exemption is a state, not a folder name. It only holds as long as the content is neither updated nor revised after 28 June 2025.
- Online maps are exempt only under a condition: if the map serves navigation purposes, the essential information has to be available in accessible digital form alongside it.
- Third-party content drops out when the economic operator neither funded nor developed it and it is not under that operator's control. A purchased widget rarely meets all three.
- The exemption does not replace an inventory. Claiming it requires a date, a type and a classification per item - otherwise it is one assertion against another when an authority asks.
Five exemptions, one scope
The BFSG addresses products and services. For services delivered through a website or an app it applies in full - with one restriction set out in the same section. Section 1(4) BFSG opens it with a sentence that leaves little room for interpretation; the German wording is "Dieses Gesetz gilt nicht für den folgenden Inhalt von Webseiten und mobilen Anwendungen", meaning that the act does not apply to the following content of websites and mobile applications. Five numbered items follow. Anyone implementing the BFSG requirements uses that list as a filter in practice: whatever falls under it stays untouched for now, everything else goes into the remediation plan. Drawing that line at the start usually saves more budget than a later negotiation about scope.
Number 1 covers recorded time-based media published before 28 June 2025 - video and audio from the existing stock, including recorded webinars and product demonstrations. Number 2 covers office application file formats published before the same day: text documents, spreadsheets and presentations, as well as the PDF produced from them. Number 3 exempts online maps and mapping services, but only under an explicitly stated condition. Number 4 covers third-party content that the economic operator neither funded nor developed and that is not under its control. Number 5 describes archives - defined by their state, not by their place in the menu. Four of the five items are therefore tied to a fact that can be evidenced: a date, a text alternative, a contractual relationship, a state of rest.
The exemption applies to content, not to the service
The 28 June 2025 cut-off and its half-life
Two of the five exemptions depend on a date. Numbers 1 and 2 apply to content published before 28 June 2025. That is the same day from which the act applies to newly provided services, and it has to be read as a publication date, not as the date a file was last modified. A training video from 2021 that has sat unchanged in the media section ever since is exempt. The same video, recut and uploaded again in August 2026, is not. The difference is not in the content but in the act of publishing it again.
That half-life is the real trap in the catalogue. It does not take effect through a formal decision but through everyday edits nobody considers legally relevant: an updated price in a table, a new phone number in a brochure, a replaced foreword, a video with a new opening title. Each of those creates a publication after the cut-off date and therefore a document that has to meet the requirements. In practice this means the pile of exempt content shrinks with every editorial day, and it shrinks quietly. Apply the catalogue once without maintaining the list afterwards, and a year later the result is one nobody can defend.
| Action on the stock | What the wording says | Practical consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Office file from 2024 is left untouched | published before 28 June 2025 | exemption under number 2 continues to hold |
| Price list from 2024 gets new prices | published again after the cut-off date | exemption ends, the document falls into scope |
| Video from 2023 stays online unchanged | recorded time-based medium before the cut-off | exemption under number 1 continues to hold |
| Video from 2023 is recut and uploaded | new publication after the cut-off date | captions and audio description become relevant |
| Archive page receives a new paragraph | content revised after the cut-off date | archive exemption under number 5 ends for that page |
| Move to a new server without editorial change | no new content, no revision | exemption stands, the evidence belongs in the inventory |
The last row is why an inventory is worth more than a good memory. A system migration often writes new timestamps into the database, and a file frequently picks up a new modification date when it is copied. Looking only at the file system then makes an entire stock look like it is in scope although nothing about the content changed - and buys work nobody needs. The publication date therefore belongs in a list that does not follow a migration but outlives it.
Archives are a state, not a drawer
Number 5 is the exemption with the greatest leverage and the shortest shelf life. The wording covers "Inhalte von Webseiten und mobilen Anwendungen, die als Archive gelten, da ihre Inhalte nach dem 28. Juni 2025 weder aktualisiert noch überarbeitet werden" - content of websites and mobile applications qualifying as archives because it is neither updated nor revised after 28 June 2025. The subordinate clause is not a justification, it is the condition: a section qualifies as an archive because it rests, not because of what it is called. A menu item labelled Archive above a page that gains a new entry every month does not meet the requirement - and a section without that label can meet it if nothing has happened there for years.
In practice this covers what a company keeps online for documentation purposes: press releases from earlier years, discontinued product data sheets, annual reports, programme booklets, minutes, year-in-review pages. What matters is the self-commitment. Running a section as an archive is a promise not to touch it again: no new entries, no quietly maintained contact details, no silently corrected figures. If something is changed after all, the exemption ends for the changed content, without warning and without a letter from an authority. Every archive decision therefore needs a name attached: the unit that leaves the section alone and that gets asked why a date inside it is more recent than the cut-off.
Recorded media before the cut-off
Video and audio published before 28 June 2025. Captions and transcripts still make sense - the article on captions and transcripts shows how they are produced.
Old office application file formats
Text documents, spreadsheets and presentations plus the PDF generated from them, published before the cut-off date. Anything newer belongs in accessible PDF work.
Online maps with substitute information
Exempt provided that, for maps serving navigation purposes, the essential information is available in accessible digital form. The article on store locators shows what that looks like.
Third-party content outside your control
Neither funded nor developed and not subject to your control. The boundary is narrower than expected - see the assessment of third-party widgets.
Archives at rest
Content that is neither updated nor revised after 28 June 2025. What decides the case is the state of the section, not its label in the menu.
Everything else
Navigation, forms, sign-in, checkout, current documents and every page created after the cut-off date. No catalogue helps here, only implementation.
Four of the six tiles point to articles covering that content type in detail. That is no accident: the exemption ends the obligation, not the benefit. A video without captions stays unusable for people with hearing impairments even if it was uploaded in 2019, and an office file without structure stays a block of text for a screen reader. Remediating the exempt pile anyway is a reach decision rather than a legal one - and the order is free to choose. That is exactly where the value of the split lies: it turns a list of obligations into a list of priorities.
A folder called Archive does not create an exemption
Maps and third-party content: exemption with a condition
Number 3 is the only exemption in the catalogue that asks for something in return. It covers "Online-Karten und Kartendienste, sofern bei Karten für Navigationszwecke wesentliche Informationen barrierefrei zugänglich in digitaler Form bereitgestellt werden": online maps and mapping services, provided that for maps serving navigation purposes the essential information is supplied in accessible digital form. The condition in the subordinate clause separates two cases. An overview map that merely shows the general area of a location is uncritical. A map someone uses to find the way to a branch serves navigation purposes - and then the address, opening hours, directions, public transport connections and the accessibility of the entrance have to sit next to it as text. That text version is not a concession, it is the price of the exemption; without it the precondition is missing.
Number 4 sounds like a convenient answer to embedded third-party content and turns out to be the strictest item in the catalogue. It covers "Inhalte von Dritten, die von dem betreffenden Wirtschaftsakteur weder finanziert noch entwickelt werden noch dessen Kontrolle unterliegen" - third-party content that the economic operator concerned neither funds nor develops and that is not subject to its control. Those are three conditions, and they have to be met at the same time. A review window with a monthly fee is funded. A booking tool configured in your own account is under your control. A map section populated with your own markers has been developed. A comment left by a visitor, by contrast, regularly meets all three: the company neither paid for it nor wrote it and does not steer its content.
- Is money paid for this content or for the tool that displays it? Then it is funded.
- Was it commissioned, adapted or styled for you? Then it is developed.
- Can you change what visitors see from an account at the provider? Then it is under your control.
- Is the content part of the checkout, the sign-in or the appointment flow? Then it is part of the service.
- Does the same provider offer a more accessible variant? Then embedding this one is a choice, not a constraint.
- Does the page stay usable without this content? Then leaving it out belongs in the assessment.
If even one of those questions comes out in favour of your own influence, number 4 does not apply. That is not a flaw in the act but its logic: choosing, purchasing and embedding a third-party component is a decision about the usability of your own page. For the remaining cases genuinely outside your control, ongoing accessibility monitoring helps, because a third-party window changes without notice and a classification that was correct in spring can be wrong by autumn.
Taking stock: an inventory instead of guesswork
The catalogue only pays off once someone applies it to a concrete stock. That needs neither a tool nor a project, just a table with six columns: address, title, type, publication date, last editorial change, classification. The first five columns can largely be filled from the content management system, the media library and the server logs. The sixth column is the actual work; many items can already be decided after two questions.
The decision path always runs the same way, from the clearest question to the least clear one. Following it in that order avoids the debate about control and navigation purpose for all the documents that already stop at the first question. The order is therefore not a formality; it decides how much deliberation is needed at all.
- Establish the date: when was this content published? Not when the file was last saved.
- If that date is after 28 June 2025, the path ends here. The content is fully in scope.
- If it is earlier, determine the type: time-based medium, office application file format, map, third-party content, archive page or ordinary page content.
- For ordinary page content the path also ends. The catalogue names documents and special cases, not the page itself.
- For media and office file formats, check whether anything has changed since the cut-off date. Every change resets the publication date.
- For maps, decide whether they serve the purpose of finding a route. If so, put the essential information next to them as text and note where it sits.
- For third-party content, answer the three conditions separately: not funded, not developed, not under your control.
- For archive content, record since when the section has been at rest and which unit keeps it that way.
- Enter the classification: exempt under number 1 to 5, in scope, or unclear with a reason.
- Sort everything in scope by actual usage. The most frequently opened document comes before the most complete one.
The column holding the unclear cases is the most important one of all. It collects exactly those items someone will later ask about, and it keeps that discussion out of the rest. Ten unclear items is a good result; they can usually be settled in one meeting. Two hundred unclear items is not a legal problem but a sign that the date column is wrong.
| Type of item | Question to ask about the single item | What belongs in the inventory |
|---|---|---|
| Video, audio, recording | published before 28 June 2025 and unchanged since? | date of first publication and date of the last edit |
| Text document, spreadsheet, presentation | published before the cut-off and editorially untouched? | publication date, storage location, number of downloads |
| PDF from an office application | created before the cut-off or exported again afterwards? | creation date and reference to the source file |
| Online map | does it serve the purpose of finding a route? | location of the text alternative on the same page |
| Embedded third-party window | funded, developed or controlled? | contract reference, configuration access, role of the provider |
| Archive section | has it been fully at rest since the cut-off date? | date of the last change and name of the responsible unit |
That table doubles as the template for a conversation with a market surveillance authority. How such a procedure runs and which documents are requested is covered in the article on market surveillance. What comes back from an audit as findings is sorted in the article on the remediation plan. Both steps get considerably shorter when the inventory already exists - because the scope has to be settled before the technology can be discussed.
What the exemption saves and what it does not cover
The catalogue in Section 1(4) is a scope exemption: the act does not apply to that content, so there is nothing to assess, document or retain. That sets it apart from the disproportionate burden under Section 17 BFSG, which demands precisely the opposite. The provision reads "Der Wirtschaftsakteur dokumentiert die Beurteilung nach Absatz 1 Satz 2 und bewahrt sie für einen Zeitraum von fünf Jahren ab der letzten Bereitstellung eines Produkts auf dem Markt oder nach der letzten Erbringung einer Dienstleistung auf." - the operator documents the assessment and retains it for five years from the last time the product was made available or the service was provided. The same provision requires the operator to repeat the assessment "seine Beurteilung nach Absatz 1 Satz 2 für jede Dienstleistungskategorie oder -art mindestens alle fünf Jahre", that is at least every five years for each category or type of service. Knowing both routes means choosing the cheaper one - the details are in the article on disproportionate burden.
What the exemption does not cover is the rest of the site. Missing accessibility there carries an administrative fine under Section 37 BFSG; the provision sets a frame under which breaches can be penalised "mit einer Geldbuße bis zu hunderttausend Euro und in den übrigen Fällen mit einer Geldbuße bis zu zehntausend Euro geahndet werden" - up to one hundred thousand euro, and up to ten thousand euro in the remaining cases. That frame is an upper limit rather than an expectation, but it explains why cleanly separating the two piles is in your own interest: a maintained inventory shows that a selection was made and reasoned, instead of letting it look like an omission. For the documents that remain, remediation can then be planned in a targeted way - the article on accessible PDFs describes what it involves.
Two routes, one goal: less effort, with evidence
Public bodies work from a different catalogue
Anyone working for a federal public body finds their exemption catalogue not in the BFSG but in the BITV 2.0; bodies of the federal states and municipalities follow the respective state law. Section 2(2) BITV 2.0 opens with the sentence "Von der Anwendung dieser Verordnung ausgenommen sind folgende Inhalte von Websites und mobilen Anwendungen" - the following content of websites and mobile applications is excluded from the application of this regulation - and then lists three groups: reproductions from heritage collections, archives, and certain content from federal broadcasters. The archive definition there is notably narrower. Exempt are "Archive, die weder Inhalte enthalten, die für aktive Verwaltungsverfahren benötigt werden, noch nach dem 23. September 2019 aktualisiert oder überarbeitet wurden": archives that neither contain content needed for active administrative procedures nor were updated or revised after 23 September 2019. Two differences stand out immediately - a different cut-off date and an additional condition tied to ongoing procedures.
On top of that comes a duty the BFSG does not contain in this form. Section 12a(8) BGG requires: "Angebote öffentlicher Stellen im Internet, die auf Websites Dritter veröffentlicht werden, sind soweit möglich barrierefrei zu gestalten." - offerings of public bodies published on third-party websites have to be made accessible as far as possible. A presence on someone else's platform is therefore not exempt merely because the platform belongs to another party. Anyone serving both regimes - an agency with public and private clients, for instance - keeps two inventories with two cut-off dates. The columns are the same, the classification is not, and copying a template from one project into the other is the fastest route to a wrong row.
The exemption is not a result, it is an interim balance. It says what does not have to be done today - and it ends on the day someone opens the file again and saves it.
Another form of grandfathering is also time-limited, and it is easily confused with the content catalogue. Section 38(1) BFSG allows that "Dienstleistungserbringer bis zum 27. Juni 2030 ihre Dienstleistungen weiterhin unter Einsatz von Produkten erbringen, die von ihnen bereits vor dem 28. Juni 2025 zur Erbringung dieser oder ähnlicher Dienstleistungen rechtmäßig eingesetzt wurden": service providers may continue until 27 June 2030 to deliver their services using products they already used lawfully before 28 June 2025 for these or similar services. That concerns products, not content. For self-service terminals, subsection 2 sets its own limit: they may continue in use "bis zum Ende ihrer wirtschaftlichen Nutzungsdauer, aber nicht länger als fünfzehn Jahre nach ihrer Ingebrauchnahme" - until the end of their economic life, but no longer than fifteen years after they were put into service. Keeping those periods apart avoids a costly mix-up: an office file from 2024 is not protected until 2030 just because a terminal is.
So that the inventory does not go stale after six months, it belongs in the same cadence as the rest of the testing. Which rhythm is suitable is covered in the article on the review cadence after go-live; what an automated run fundamentally cannot see is shown by usability testing with disabled participants. Together they keep the date column current - and the date column decides the scope of the next quotation.
Sources and legal basis
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