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Accessibility
(Barrierefreiheit)

What this page is

I want every learner to be able to use my German courses, whatever tools they use to read, listen or navigate. This page says what works, what has limits, and how to reach me.

What it covers

smartergerman.com, the learning app at learn.smartergerman.com, and my practice tools. The checkout and the classic course player run on Teachable, the community on Circle, live classes on Zoom, and some recordings on YouTube; their accessibility is described by those companies (see below).

Standard and status

I work to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, level AA.

Checked on 30 August 2026: my pages and the learning app meet WCAG 2.1 AA with one deliberate exception. The SmarterGerman orange used for buttons and highlights has a lower contrast against white than level AA asks for at small text sizes. It is my brand colour and it stays. Every page has a skip link to the content, landmarks for screen readers, a keyboard path through every exercise, and captions on the videos. Text zoom up to 200 % works without loss.

Videos

Course videos carry English subtitles, produced during editing; a few recent recordings are still being captioned and are listed in my records.

Live captions in a Zoom class are available on request: write to me before the class and I switch them on.

Third-party services

Teachable (checkout, classic course player): Teachable states that it is "partially conformant with WCAG 2.1 level AA" (statement of 12 October 2021).

Circle (community): Circle has published no accessibility statement that I could find.

Zoom (live classes): Zoom offers captions, live transcription and screen-reader support; I enable captions for a class on request.

YouTube (some recordings): Google has published no conformance report for the embedded player.

Documents

The downloadable story "Milk. A Space Adventure" is a tagged PDF with document language and headings.

Feedback and help

If something is hard to use, write to [email protected]. I answer myself, usually within two working days, and I fix what can be fixed.

Legal note

SmarterGerman is a microenterprise; the German Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz (BFSG) does not apply to its services. This statement is voluntary. The market surveillance authority for accessibility in Germany is the Marktüberwachungsstelle der Länder für die Barrierefreiheit von Produkten und Dienstleistungen (MLBF), Magdeburg.

Last reviewed: 30 August 2026.