About us

Accessibility

Our commitment to accessibility

Our goal: an accessible fair

Reducing barriers is a high priority for us. For many years, we have been working to improve the accessibility of our event year after year. Our goal is for Frankfurter Buchmesse to be accessible to all members of the industry as well as everyone interested in culture and literature. By continuously removing barriers, we enhance the quality of the on-site experience for all participants and make our digital services easier to use.

Within Frankfurter Buchmesse, an interdepartmental focus group is advancing accessibility on three levels:

the ongoing removal of barriers online and on-site, and the expansion of offers and services for people with disabilities
promoting professional exchange on accessibility within the publishing industry
organising public events that raise awareness of accessibility, inclusion, and social diversity

Support, feedback & suggestions

If you have any difficulties attending Frankfurter Buchmesse or using our digital services, please contact us. We also welcome your feedback and suggestions on how we can make Frankfurter Buchmesse and our services more accessible – by email at servicecenter@buchmesse.de(opens in a new window) or by phone on +49 69 2102-0.

From buying tickets to companion services: you can find practical information and guidance for visitors with disabilities on our website.

If you need support on site, please speak to the staff at our information counters or the Awareness Team on the fairgrounds.

Improving accessibility at the exhibition grounds

Our team continues to work on making the fair experience accessible for as many participants as possible. The project “Frankfurter Buchmesse for Everyone” serves as the cornerstone. In cooperation with the Technical University Darmstadt, we surveyed and analysed information collected from fair visitors between 2017 and 2019. These findings led to various measures being developed and implemented, including:

Optimising signage at the exhibition site
Widening the corridors
Use of the carpet colour red for better orientation and distribution of visitors in the halls for vertical and circumferential aisles as well as in the entrance areas, grey for numbered main aisles.
Installing additional seating
Sign language interpreting at various fair events
Offering guide services for persons with a vision impairment
Tours through the Guest of Honour Pavilion for persons with a vision impairment
Compiling a set of guidelines for running accessible events

In addition, we have created a useful guide with tips and advice on removing barriers at the fair stand.

Useful tips for an accessible fair stand

Digital services

Website buchmesse.de

We are currently optimising our website to meet WCAG conformity level AA by 2024. In order to remove current barriers, we subjected our website to a comprehensive technical, design and editorial analysis based on the requirements of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 - AA in December 2022 and June 2023. We have continuously been implementing the resulting adaptations. As soon as these implementations are complete, we will update our declaration of accessibility here.

News

“An accessible stand can reduce costs”

How can I design a stand that is accessible to all visitors? What matters most? Where can I find help, and how does this fit into my budget? We talked with Tanja Väth from the book fair’s Fair Operations department.

To the interview
News

"Because it’s not enough for us to have one or two books about deaf people and tick that box; we need a whole bookshelf."

Sara Nović - Author of the New York Times-Bestseller novel "True Biz" (2022, Random House, German Translation from Judith Schwaab, "Klartext", 2025, btb) teaches Deaf studies and creative writing and lives in Philadelphia with her family. In our interview, Sara shares her experience of becoming an author and writing "True Biz", she talks about the power and humour of American Sign Language (ASL) and her hopes for the representation of marginalized voices like people with disabilities and the LGTBQ+ scene in literature.

To the Interview