Why an accessibility overlay won't make your site compliant

Accessibility overlays are third-party scripts that add a toolbar to your site and promise to detect and repair accessibility problems automatically. The pitch is easy to like: paste one line of code and you're done.

The problem is that most barriers live in your site's structure and behavior, not in its surface. A script running after the page loads can't reliably know what an image means, which order a form should be filled in, or how a custom widget is supposed to work. It guesses, and when it guesses wrong it can make things worse for the screen reader and keyboard users it's meant to help.

What disabled users and regulators have said

Many disabled people and accessibility practitioners have spoken out against overlays; the Overlay Fact Sheet, signed by hundreds of practitioners, lays out the concerns. In 2025 the U.S. Federal Trade Commission ordered one overlay vendor, accessiBe, to pay $1 million over claims that its AI tool could make any website compliant with WCAG. And businesses using overlays have continued to receive accessibility demand letters and lawsuits.

What works instead

1. Find the real issues. An audit that combines automated scanning with manual testing against WCAG 2.2 AA.
2. Fix them at the source. Change the templates, components and content so the fix sticks.
3. Keep them fixed. Add automated checks to your build, train the people who publish content, and re-test after big changes.

It takes more than one line of code, but it's the approach that actually works for people, and it holds up.