Platform guide · Webflow

Webflow accessibility and the BFSG

A Webflow site is as accessible as the person who built it. Webflow says so in its own accessibility statement: its most-used elements are tested, but when building an accessible site "the power lies in the hands of the builder" [4]. This page separates what Webflow gives you from what stays your job.

Does the BFSG apply to your Webflow site?

It depends on what the site does. The BFSG covers listed services to consumers: e-commerce, banking, telecoms, e-books and passenger transport. If you sell to consumers through Webflow Ecommerce, you provide an e-commerce service – a "Dienstleistung im elektronischen Geschäftsverkehr" (§ 1(3) no. 5 BFSG) – and the law has applied to it since 28 June 2025. It transposes the European Accessibility Act, so selling into other EU countries brings equivalent national laws there [1][2].

Micro-enterprises that provide services are exempt: fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than €2 million (§ 2 no. 17, § 3(3) BFSG) [1]. Both conditions must be met; details are on our page on the micro-enterprise exemption. Check both numbers rather than assuming. A purely B2B shop is not a service to consumers.

A company's marketing site with no consumer transactions is generally not itself one of the listed services – but a booking or order function on it can be. The full scope is in the BFSG and the European Accessibility Act; for shops, see BFSG for online shops.

What the platform gives you, and what it does not

Webflow is a hosted builder that, unlike most, hands you the markup: you choose each element's HTML tag, classes and custom attributes, and can add your own code [3]. You cannot change the hosting or the scripts behind Webflow's own components – only replace a component with your own.

You get:

  • Tested core elements. Tabs, Dropdown, Image, Text Link, Link Block, Button, Section, List, List Item, Collection List, Navbar and Slider have been tested for keyboard operation and screen-reader support. Webflow says sites using them can conform up to WCAG 2.1 AA [4].
  • Control over semantics. HTML5 tags per element, alt text or a "decorative" setting per image, relative units for type, custom attributes and custom focus styles [3].
  • Built-in checks. The Audit panel in the Designer scans the current page for issues such as missing alt text, skipped heading levels, missing form labels and empty links [3][5]. A colour-contrast tool and a low-vision preview sit alongside it [3].
  • Reduced-motion conditions for interactions. Each interaction can be told what to do when a visitor has asked their system for reduced motion: play no animation, or skip straight to the end state [6].

You do not get:

  • An accessible site by default. The conformance Webflow describes applies to those elements. Everything you assemble from div blocks, interactions and custom code is yours [4].
  • A full audit from the Audit panel. Webflow calls it not a comprehensive accessibility audit and points to dedicated testing tools [5]. It looks at one page at a time.
  • Reduced motion unless you set it. The condition exists per interaction; an interaction without it plays for everyone [6].
  • Control over what the payment provider renders. Webflow Ecommerce lets you design the cart and checkout [8], and payment runs through Stripe or PayPal, with Apple Pay and Google Pay as options [9]. The provider's buttons and fields are theirs.

What we find on Webflow sites

Interactions that never stop

Motion is often part of the brief: page-load staggers, scroll reveals, parallax, looping logo marquees and Lottie animations, most without a reduced-motion condition. Anything that moves for more than five seconds alongside other content needs a way to pause it (WCAG 2.2.2). Large motion on scroll also touches WCAG 2.3.3, a AAA criterion – not required, but Webflow's own checklist warns against parallax and scrolljacking for the same reason [7].

Content hidden until an animation runs

A reveal interaction starts elements at opacity 0 and fades them in on scroll. Focus can land on links nobody sees yet, and at high zoom whole sections stay blank.

Widgets built from div blocks

Modals, accordions, custom tabs and mega menus are often assembled from div blocks and click interactions instead of the tested elements. They have no role, name or aria-expanded, and no keyboard access. A modal opens without moving focus into it and does not close with Escape – exactly what Webflow's checklist asks for [7].

Because any element can be any tag, structure follows the design: headings picked for size, the page title as a div, cards as image-only Link Blocks, social icons as empty links, focus states styled away.

CMS content and forms

CMS Collection images often lack alt text because the collection has no field for it. Forms use placeholders instead of labels, and success and error messages appear unannounced. Consent banners, added through custom code or an app, sit in front of everything.

Webflow Ecommerce: variants, cart and checkout

Variant options restyled as pills lose their name and selected state. "Add to cart" opens a cart panel without moving focus or announcing anything. The checkout is designable, so its labels, errors and autocomplete values depend on the design. The payment provider's buttons and card fields are embedded in the page and need a sane focus order around them.

Where to look first

Where to look first
CriterionWhy on WebflowAutomation
2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide (A)Looping animations, marquees, autoplay slidersPartly automated
2.1.1 Keyboard (A)Div-built modals, accordions, menusPartly automated
2.4.3 Focus Order (A)Modals and cart panels, hidden reveal contentPartly automated
2.4.7 Focus Visible (AA)Unstyled or removed focus statesPartly automated
4.1.2 Name, Role, Value (A)Div-built toggles, variant pillsPartly automated
1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A)Headings and tags chosen for stylePartly automated
1.1.1 Non-text Content (A)CMS images without an alt fieldPartly automated
2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context) (A)Image-only Link Blocks, icon linksPartly automated
4.1.3 Status Messages (AA)Form success messages, add to cartManual only
1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) (AA)Design-led palettes, text over imagesAutomated

"Automated" means a rule can decide the criterion on its own; "partly automated" means a rule finds some failures and a person has to judge the rest. The full list is in WCAG 2.2 AA, criterion by criterion.

A sensible order of work

  1. List your interactions. Give every interaction a reduced-motion condition – no animation for decoration, skip to end for functional ones like a menu [6] – and a pause control to anything that loops.
  2. Replace div-built widgets. Use a tested element – Tabs, Dropdown, Navbar, Slider – where one does the job; otherwise add roles, names and states with custom attributes and handle focus and Escape in code.
  3. Run the Audit panel on every page template. It checks one page at a time, so open each static page and Collection template and fix what it flags [5].
  4. Fix the CMS at the source. Add an alt-text field to every collection with images, bind it, and fill it for existing items.
  5. Walk the key journeys with a keyboard. Navigation, a form with its error state, and on a store: product → variant → cart → checkout → payment in test mode.
  6. Re-test after every redesign. Webflow makes big visual changes cheap, and each can undo a fix; a scheduled crawl catches that.

What Reviseberg checks on Webflow – and what you still test yourself

Reviseberg crawls your published site, including CMS Collection pages and product pages, and runs every axe-core rule on every page at a desktop width of 1280 pixels, then repeats the rules that change with the layout – contrast and target size among them – at 360 pixels. Results are mapped to WCAG 2.2 A/AA and EN 301 549. Findings are grouped into issues by rule and ranked by the points you gain by fixing them, so a defect in one component or Collection template shows up as one issue on 400 pages rather than 400 separate entries. Where the Audit panel looks at the page open in the Designer, the crawl looks at every published page.

The keyboard agent opens the pages of a journey you name – the home page, a product page, the cart – and presses Tab, Shift+Tab and Escape through each, recording every step. It reports unreachable elements, lost or invisible focus, missing skip links and keyboard traps, which is where div-built modals and menus show up. It does not fill in forms or place an order, so error states, checkout and payment are yours to walk by hand. The free report covers up to 100 pages and runs the keyboard agent on one page you choose.

You still test some things yourself: whether alt text describes the image, whether motion is acceptable with reduced motion switched on, and how the site behaves with a screen reader and zoom. Screen-reader, zoom and voice-control agents are not built yet; for those criteria the platform gives you guided manual tests, and a criterion nobody has tested is reported as untested, never as passed. There is no Webflow app from us, nothing is applied to your site automatically, and we never inject an overlay script.

Written to be useful, not as legal advice. As of 27 September 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Does using Webflow's accessible elements make us compliant?

No. Webflow's claim covers the tested elements [4]. Your colours, your custom widgets, your interactions, your content and your checkout design are not part of it, and on most Webflow sites that is where the findings are.

Does a clean Audit panel mean the site is accessible?

No. It checks a handful of common issues on one page, and Webflow itself says it is not a comprehensive audit [5]. Motion, keyboard operation, focus handling and status messages are outside it.

Does an accessibility app or overlay help?

A widget layered over the site with JavaScript does not fix the causes in your build. In 2023 the European Disability Forum and IAAP stated that overlays do not make a website accessible or compliant with European accessibility legislation [10]. In 2025 the US Federal Trade Commission finalised an order requiring the overlay vendor accessiBe to pay $1 million over its compliance claims [11]. More: accessibility overlays.

Do we need an accessibility statement?

A store under the BFSG must provide information on how its service meets the accessibility requirements (§ 14 BFSG with Annex 3) [1]. That is not the same document as the public-sector accessibility statement under BITV 2.0. The statement editor drafts the information from your test results and only claims what they support.

Webflow, Wix or Squarespace?

The difference is who controls the markup. On Webflow you do, so you can fix – and break – nearly everything. Compare Wix and Squarespace, where the platform decides more and you decide less.

Sources

  1. Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz (BFSG), §§ 1(3) no. 5, 2 no. 17, 3(3), 14, Annex 3 – https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bfsg/ (wording checked via https://bfsg-gesetz.de/, 27 Sep 2026)
  2. Directive (EU) 2019/882 (European Accessibility Act) – https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32019L0882
  3. Webflow, "Web accessibility: guide, courses, and features" – https://webflow.com/accessibility
  4. Webflow, "Accessibility statement" – https://webflow.com/accessibility/statement
  5. Webflow University, "Intro to the Audit panel" – https://university.webflow.com/videos/audit-panel
  6. Webflow University, "How to respect reduced motion" – https://university.webflow.com/videos/how-to-respect-reduced-motion
  7. Webflow Accessibility Checklist – https://webflow.com/accessibility/checklist/where/audit-panel
  8. Webflow, "Webflow Ecommerce website builder" – https://webflow.com/feature/ecommerce
  9. Webflow Blog, "PayPal Checkout for Ecommerce is officially here" – https://webflow.com/blog/paypal-for-ecommerce
  10. European Disability Forum & IAAP, "Accessibility overlays don't guarantee compliance with European legislation" (17 May 2023) – https://www.edf-feph.org/accessibility-overlays-dont-guarantee-compliance-with-european-legislation/
  11. US Federal Trade Commission, "FTC Approves Final Order Requiring accessiBe to Pay $1 Million" (22 Apr 2025) – https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/04/ftc-approves-final-order-requiring-accessibe-pay-1-million

See what a scan finds on your site

One page in about thirty seconds, no email needed. The full report covers up to 100 pages and a keyboard journey.