Accessible German Laws for Screen Readers

Barrierefreie Gesetze means “accessible laws”. The site publishes German statutes as web pages that work well with screen readers, braille displays, screen magnification and the keyboard. The legal texts themselves are in German only. This page gives an overview of the project in English.

Why this project exists

German laws are freely available online. Federal law, state law and European Union law are published on separate portals, and each portal has its own layout. Within a subsection, sentences are not numbered. Cross-references to other provisions are not linked. The PDF versions of the Basic Law and the Civil Code on gesetze-im-internet.de have bookmarks but no tags, so a screen reader cannot tell a heading from the body text.

A statute is rarely read from beginning to end. The work consists of jumps: to a provision, to sentence 3 of subsection 2, along a reference to another provision and back again. A screen reader presents text one line after another. Every missing piece of structure therefore costs time. In an exam with a fixed time limit, this matters most.

Searching a document does not lead to one clear place. The search finds every passage with the same number. In the Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, BGB), a search for “§ 433” returns 13 hits. Eleven of them are references from other provisions. The provision itself is somewhere in between.

Navigation at the core

The focus is on the shortest route to the passage sought. The headings reflect the structure of each law in levels, from book or part down to the individual provision. With the heading navigation of a screen reader, the whole law can be traversed this way. The table of contents is linked.

In the Word, PDF and text downloads, each provision also carries a search marker with a hash sign before and after its number. A search for #433# finds exactly one place in the BGB: the heading of section 433. References do not show up. For articles, a full stop comes before the second hash sign, for example #20a.# for Article 20a of the Basic Law. A search for #Ende# leads to the end of the law.

What else the site offers

• All laws follow the same structure and work the same way.
• Subsections and sentences are numbered. Sentence numbers can be switched off.
• Each law is available in full on a single page and can be downloaded as a Word file, a tagged PDF and a plain text file.
• Frequently used laws also have a separate page for each provision with a permanent address, for example /bund/gg/art-1/ for Article 1 of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz).
• The field “Norm aufrufen” on the home page leads straight to a provision, for example with the input “Art. 1 GG”.
• Font size and contrast can be changed with the button “Anzeige anpassen”.

Sources and legal status

The texts come from official sources, mainly the federal portal gesetze-im-internet.de. This website is not an official publication. Only the text promulgated in the official gazette is legally binding. Details on sources and licences are on the page Quellen und Lizenzen (in German).

Status

So far the site covers part of federal law and three texts of European Union law: the Treaty on European Union, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. More federal laws and the law of the state of Baden-Württemberg are planned, without a fixed date.

Background

The idea goes back to the University of Kiel. There, my student assistant converted laws into a form I could work with. Together with his brother, a computer scientist, he automated the process and turned it into a free website open to everyone. That website is no longer active, and this project revives the idea. The full story is on the page Vorgeschichte (in German).

Who runs the site

I run the site as a private project, without advertising and free of charge.

Feedback and legal information

Reports of errors and barriers are welcome. Contact details are on the page Kontakt.

The Impressum (legal notice), the Datenschutzerklärung (privacy policy) and the Erklärung zur Barrierefreiheit (accessibility statement) are available in German only. The German versions are authoritative.