BBG - Bielefelder Barrierefreie Gesetzessammlung

The desktop application "Bielefelder Barrierefreie Gesetzessammlung" (BBG) is a new software project in the field of digital accessibility of the ZAB in cooperation with the Chair of Civil Law, Civil Procedure Law, Methodology, Digitalisation Law and Legal Tech of the Faculty of Law.
The BBG enables law students to use all texts relevant to exams free of charge and independently.

Vision

The Bielefelder Barrierefreie Gesetzessammlung (BBG) is to be developed as an examination and learning application that enables the presentation of legal texts in an accessible form. We are pursuing the following goals:

• Presentation of all relevant legal texts for studying & teaching
• Accessibility first! - The application should be adapted to the needs of students directly during development
• Full support for screen readers and all common assistive technologies
• Automatic updating of the texts to the latest version
• Availability on Mac, Windows and Linux

For the exam mode, we take into account the requirements of an exam situation. This includes the fact that bookmarks and the history can be easily reset and that the application works offline.
The legal texts are grouped thematically according to civil and criminal law, constitutional and administrative law and NRW state law.
Outside of examinations, the application can also be provided with an extended database in order to be able to use laws beyond the scope of the study programme.

Accessibility

Accessibility criteria are at the centre of development and aim to design content and functions in such a way that they are fully inclusive for all users.
We ensure this through

• regular usability tests for intuitive operation with all assistance systems
• Targeted optimisation of previously inaccessible content
• Testing in accordance with the current WCAG and BITV standards

The fulfilment of the technical standards of WCAG 2.1 and BITV 2.0 is planned with the full version. However, the developer versions still contain errors in individual aspects. We are happy to receive bug reports from our developers or via the public Gitlab project.

Technical background

The project is being developed as a desktop and IOS app based on Tauri with Nuxt.js. The use of these modern frameworks enables great compatibility and interaction with new assistive technologies.

The application is bundled with a version of the laws and only an internet connection is required for updating. All user data, such as visited laws or bookmarks, remain completely local and can be deleted if necessary.

Web platform

Tauri uses the native web view of the respective operating system, which is why the application remains very lightweight and can also be used smoothly on older computers. Users work in their familiar environment and can integrate operating system-specific settings directly into the BBG. Assistive technologies can also use the browser's A11y API and work without the user having to make any additional settings.

Accessibility

The eponymous goal of the project is accessibility. Specifically, the legal requirements of BITV 2.0 and WCAG are to be achieved. In addition, explicit accessibility features are planned, such as simplified navigation via shortcuts and the ability to easily jump between laws and find individual standards.

Usability is ensured by the students concerned after each feature. WCAG testing is planned by the in-house competence centre for each patch of the application.
Full compliance with the technical criteria of BITV 2.0 and WCAG is not guaranteed in the development version due to the non-accessible database, but is aimed for in the full version of the application.

A feedback process has been set up via the Gitlab project management system. In addition, comments on the application can be shared via emails to the developers or the ZAB.