Accessibility Overlays
Accessibility overlays claim quick, comprehensive compliance but often fail, can block native tools, add legal risk, and provide little real value; businesses should instead audit, remediate code, gather user feedback, and allocate budget for genuine accessibility improvements.
As accessibility lawsuits increase, and awareness around the importance of digital accessibility rises, the number of businesses implementing accessibility overlays have increased as well. Accessibility overlays are marketed as a comprehensive “solution” to ensuring legal compliance. While these tools often offer impressive statements, touting benefits like “100% compliance” and a seemingly impressive range of functionality, many of their marketing claims are largely impossible. Across the industry most experts, advocates, and individuals with disabilities widely recommend that businesses should avoid adding these tools to their websites.
How accessibility overlays work
These products are usually a snipped of code, called a script, that gets added directly to a website’s code or injected via plugin. They typically add a floating action button, or similar element, onto the website. This button then opens a menu of accessibility options such as changing the individual website’s text size, contrast, cursor size, and more.