In Switzerland accessibility is often seen as a topic for public authorities. That is only half true. Public bodies have clear duties, private providers with customers in the EU have had them since June 2025, and for everyone else accessibility is a question of reach and quality. This article sets out the legal position and an approach that works without a full rebuild.
The legal position in Switzerland
Since 2004 the Disability Discrimination Act has required the Confederation, cantons, municipalities and licensed and federally linked companies to offer their services accessibly, including online. For the federal administration the eCH-0059 standard, version 3.0, specifies the requirements: websites, mobile applications and published electronic documents must meet the WCAG 2.1 criteria at level AA. Cantons and other bodies may adopt the standard; otherwise it remains a recommendation.
For private providers the general prohibition of discrimination mainly applies today. In December 2024 the Federal Council adopted a revision intended to place stronger duties on private service providers; its outcome in parliament is worth following. Anyone building a new website today should build it so that such a duty would not require retrofitting later.
The European Accessibility Act for Swiss providers
Since 28 June 2025 the national implementations of the European Accessibility Act have applied. They cover, among others, online shops and booking flows, consumer banking services, e-books and electronic communications services. A Swiss company targeting consumers in Germany, Austria or other EU states with such services is covered, because the market counts, not the seat. Microenterprises providing services are exempt, and purely business-to-business offerings are generally not covered.
Who needs what
- Public bodies and federally linked companies: WCAG 2.1 AA under eCH-0059 as the target, including PDFs, with an accessibility statement.
- Swiss B2C providers with EU customers in covered areas: EAA conformity, in practice via EN 301 549 and thus WCAG level AA, plus the required accessibility information.
- Everyone else: no specific duty, but a clear benefit. Accessible pages are easier to use, more robust on smartphones and easier for search engines and AI systems to read.
A pragmatic approach
First, an assessment: a combination of automated testing and manual review of the most important pages and flows, such as home page, contact form, search, ordering or enquiry. Automated tools find part of the problems; whether a form works with a screen reader only a manual test can show.
Second, components first. Most failures do not arise on individual pages but in reused building blocks: navigation, form fields, buttons, dialogs, colour system. Fixing these fixes the failure on hundreds of pages at once. With a modern component architecture this is often less work than feared.
Third, content. Text alternatives for images, meaningful link texts, a real heading structure and accessible PDFs are editorial tasks. PDFs in particular are often the biggest backlog at authorities and associations.
Fourth, statement and process. An accessibility statement sets out the status and known limitations. New content and features are checked before publication, so the level reached is not lost with the next update.
Retrofit or rebuild
Whether a retrofit is worthwhile depends on the technical base. A website with a clean component structure can be improved selectively. With a heavily customised theme grown over years, or a site builder without control over the code, a relaunch can be cheaper than a hundred individual fixes. Our decision guide on relaunch or optimisation weighs this.
Accessibility, SEO and AI visibility
Many WCAG requirements match what search engines and AI systems need: text alternatives make image content readable, a real heading structure makes content structured, semantic HTML makes forms and navigation understandable. Accessibility is therefore not a separate project next to Core Web Vitals and structured data, but the same discipline from another angle.
Next steps
The steps with verifiable criteria are in our accessibility checklist. What drives the effort is described on the page on the cost of an accessible website; we offer implementation as accessible website.