Accessibility overlays: an honest look at what they do — and don't do
If you've searched for 'ADA compliance' recently, you've seen the pitch: add one line of JavaScript, get a compliance badge, stop worrying. These products are called accessibility overlays, and the promise is genuinely appealing — which is exactly why it deserves a careful look.
What an overlay is
An overlay is a script that runs in your visitor's browser on top of your existing site. It typically adds a settings panel (font size, contrast modes, animation pausing) and attempts to patch some issues on the fly — guessing alt text, adjusting tab order, relabeling buttons.
What overlays can genuinely help with
Fairness first: user-preference panels can be a real convenience, and some runtime patches do help in narrow cases. If an overlay ships a well-built contrast toggle, that's not nothing.
What they can't do
- They don't change your code. The underlying page — the thing assistive technology actually parses — still has the same missing labels, broken structure, and keyboard traps.
- Automated repair has a ceiling. A script can't know what your product photo shows, what your icon button means, or whether your checkout flow makes sense without sight. Machine-guessed alt text is often worse than none.
- They can conflict with real assistive technology. Screen-reader and keyboard users have widely reported overlays interfering with the tools they already use.
- A badge is not a status. Compliance is a property of your site at a point in time, verified by testing — not something a vendor's widget can confer.
The legal and regulatory reality
Two facts are worth weighing. First, running an overlay has not stopped web-accessibility claims — filings and demand letters have specifically named sites that rely on overlay widgets, sometimes citing the overlay itself as a barrier. Second, regulators have treated “guaranteed compliance” marketing in this category as a claim that needs evidence behind it, which is a reasonable test to apply to any tool you are asked to pay for, including ours.
None of this means overlay users will face claims — it means an overlay, by itself, is not the protection its marketing implies.
What to do instead
The unglamorous, durable path: audit your site against WCAG 2.2, fix the actual code (yours or your theme's), publish an honest accessibility statement, and keep a dated record of scans and fixes. That's real accessibility for your customers and real documentation for everyone else.
It's also, deliberately, how AdaChecked works: we scan, we report at the code level, our team fixes the theme itself when you want the work done — and we never inject a widget into your site.