Sector guide · Telecommunications

BFSG for telecommunications services

Telecoms is the sector where the requirements go furthest past the website. Alongside the usual web and app obligations sit real-time text, total conversation and access to emergency services — requirements about the service itself, not its interface.

  • Web, app, self-service and the service itself
  • Real-time text is a service requirement
  • Emergency access has its own obligations

What is covered

  • The website, the customer account and the app
  • Contract conclusion, tariff changes and cancellation flows
  • Real-time text, where the service supports voice communication
  • Total conversation — voice, video and text together — where video is offered
  • Access to emergency services through the same channels
  • Bills and contract documents you generate as PDFs

Sector guide · Telecommunications

Where telecoms fails

  • Tariff comparison tables

    Wide comparison tables with no header association and horizontal scrolling that takes the whole page with it — 1.3.1 and 1.4.10 in one component.

  • Support bots with no alternative

    A chat widget that is the only support route, built as a custom component nothing can operate, and no reachable phone or email behind it.

  • Bills as untagged PDFs

    Generated monthly, at scale, from one template. One fix, every bill.

  • Cancellation flows that time out

    A retention journey with a session limit and no way to extend it — a 2.2.1 failure on the journey with the most regulatory attention.

Criteria to check first

Each links to a plain-language page on that criterion: what it asks for, how it fails in practice, and how far an automated check can get.

All WCAG 2.2 AA criteria

Where to start

  1. Split service requirements from interface requirements

    Real-time text and emergency access are engineering work in the network, not in the front end. They need their own owner and their own evidence.

  2. Take the tables seriously

    Tariff comparison is the page every customer visits and the one component that fails on almost every operator.

  3. Give support a second route

    If the chat widget is the only way to reach a person, its accessibility is a legal question, not a UX one.

  4. Fix the bill template once

    Tagged, with a real reading order and real tables. Then it stays fixed for every customer, every month.

Questions operators ask

Is real-time text really required of us?

Where your service supports voice communication, yes — the requirement comes from the EAA and is transposed in the BFSG. It is a service capability, not a website feature, which is why it needs to be on an engineering roadmap rather than a design backlog.

Our website is fine. Are we done?

No — telecoms is precisely the sector where a clean website says the least. The website obligations are the smallest part of what applies to you.

Written to be useful, not to be legal advice. It reflects our reading of the BFSG and EN 301 549 as of 2026-09-13; for a binding assessment of your obligations, ask a lawyer.

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