Countdown to the EEA: How to make your ticket shop accessible

Reading time: 6 minutes

From 28 June 2025 on, new requirements for the accessibility of websites will apply in Germany with the Accessibility Improvement Act (BFSG). Similar regulations come into effect at the same time in other European countries due to the European Accessibility Act.

We are prepared

We have been working tirelessly since November 2024 to improve the accessibility of the purchasing process in pretix. During the same period of time, we had accessibility tests carried out by an expert. As pretix is highly configurable, this test had to be run on sample ticket shops. A detailed list of the tested functions can be found in our documentation.

We are still working on some final detail improvements that we expect to complete during this week. All significant changes are included in the current version, pretix 2025.5.0, and are therefore available to users of pretix Hosted as well as pretix Enterprise and pretix Community.

Who will be affected?

The BSFG will affect every pretix shop selling tickets or other products and services. The only exceptions will be:

• Very small companies (less than 10 employees and either annual turnover or total assets of less than € 2 million)

• Providers of services that are only offered to commercial buyers

All steps and information necessary for concluding a contract (= purchasing a ticket) are affected by the BFSG.

What do you need to do?

We build pretix with the necessary technical foundation for accessibility. Nevertheless, there are some aspects to setting up your shop to which you have to contribute for the final result to be accessible.

Check your color scheme

All colors in your ticket shop need to have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, ideally 7:1. This affects especially the primary color and the two secondary colors that you can configure in pretix. The latest version of pretix will alert you if you chose a color with a too low contrast ratio while configurating:

Older pretix versions only warned if you were below a color ratio of 2.5:1, so we recommend reviewing your chosen colors again.

Update the Widget

To guarantee the accessibility of our widget, we had to make a few changes that are not fully backwards-compatible. To avoid customers with their own styling for the widget encountering display errors without prior warning, we have released a new version of the widget.If using the widget in your pretix shop, please update it from v1 to v2.

Old example:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://pretix.eu/veranstalter/veranstaltung/widget/v1.css" crossorigin>
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://pretix.eu/widget/v1.en.js" async crossorigin></script>

New example:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://pretix.eu/veranstalter/veranstaltung/widget/v2.css" crossorigin>
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://pretix.eu/widget/v2.en.js" async crossorigin></script>

With the release of pretix 2025.6 by the end of June 2025, all installations of widget v1 will be automatically upgraded to the new version.

Further important information about the widget:

• The default style we provide with the widget does fulfill accessibility requirements. However, the style rules of your website can override this, so you will always need to check your individual configuration when using the widget.

• If you guide your customers to your ticket shop using the widget, please note that your website may also need to be accessible, at least to the point where the path to the widget can be found without accessibility issues.

Review your Markdown texts

pretix lets you customize many of your texts with Markdown. You may use Markdown for bold or italic texts, to add hyperlinks or lists.

We strongly recommend avoiding the usage of formatting rules for headings (## etc.) or the use of HTML tags, as this can affect the semantic structure of your ticket shop. Should you still wish to make use of these options, we recommend testing the resulting ticket shop for accessibility.

Do not put important information in images

Make sure that your images, such as header or product images, do not contain any information not also available in text form.

Provide information on accessibility

In Germany, BFSG §14 requires you to provide information on the accessibility of your ticket shop, similar to a privacy policy. Attachement 3 of the BFSG specifies the following content in particular:

• A general description of your service in an accessible format

• Descriptions and explanations necessary for understanding the performance of the service

• A statement of how the service meets the accessibility requirements

• The name of the responsible market surveillance authority

You may link or add the explanation in your pretix organizer account under Settings → General → Accessibility. You can find a sample template in our documentation.

Attention for public authorities: The new laws apply in addition to the existing laws based on the Web Accessibility Directive (in Germany: BITV). The earlier law, which only applies to public authorities, requires a declaration of accessibility that goes beyond the information required by the new laws. The EU Commission has published an official template for the structure of such a declaration.