Law & standards

The BITV test – and how to pass it

What lies behind the official testing procedure, how monitoring bodies proceed and how to prepare.

What is the BITV test?

The BITV test – named after BITV 2.0, Germany's federal ordinance on accessible information technology – was developed by the BIK project (“barrierefrei informieren und kommunizieren”, accessible information and communication) and is the established testing procedure for web accessibility in Germany: around 100 test steps, derived from WCAG and EN 301 549. Monitoring bodies and commissioned testing bodies work with this procedure or closely related ones.

How do the official checks work?

Simplified monitoring: automated checking of many pages – missing document titles, languages and tags in PDFs stand out immediately here.
In-depth monitoring: manual expert review of a sample, explicitly including downloaded files. This is where screen readers and PAC are used.

PDF testing in the BITV context

For documents, the bodies test against EN 301 549 chapter 10 – in practice this means the WCAG criteria plus PDF/UA technology (Matterhorn Protocol). A PDF that passes the PDF/UA check and has meaningful alt text is well prepared – but that is no guarantee, because reading order, contrast and comprehensibility are also assessed by hand there (which criteria can be checked automatically).

How to prepare

Take stock: which PDFs are on the website? (The monitoring body will find them all.)
Prioritise by number of downloads and relevance to administrative procedures.
Run every new document through DokAudit before publication – the test report is at the same time your evidence of an orderly approach.
Keep the accessibility statement up to date: state honestly what is not yet accessible – that is permitted and better than silence.

Theory done – now check your first document.

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