Why an overlay won’t make your site accessible

Every few weeks a client asks me about accessibility overlays: the widgets that add a toolbar to your site and promise instant WCAG compliance. The pitch is appealing. Paste in a script, and the problem goes away.

It doesn’t.

They can’t fix the real problems

The most serious barriers live in your HTML and your design: buttons that aren’t buttons, forms without labels, content that only makes sense visually. A script running on top of the page can guess at some of these, but it guesses wrong often enough that disabled users learn not to trust it.

They often get in the way

Many screen reader users already have their own tools configured exactly the way they need them. An overlay that changes behaviour or adds its own controls can clash with those tools and make the site harder to use.

The people overlays claim to help are often the loudest voices asking companies to remove them.

They don’t protect you legally

Organisations using overlays still receive accessibility complaints and lawsuits. Under the European Accessibility Act, what matters is whether people can use your service, not what you installed.

What to do instead

Put the same budget towards an audit of your most important user journeys, then fix what it finds, starting with the issues that block people completely. Train the people who build your product so the same problems don’t come back.