Unkillable Access / An alternative to accessibility overlays

An alternative to accessibility overlays

Overlays cost $490–$3,990/year metered by your traffic, and courts have not been kind to them. Get real WCAG fixes as code you own. $49 once.

An accessibility overlay is a JavaScript file you add to your site that claims to detect and repair accessibility barriers as each page loads. The pitch is irresistible: one line of code, and the problem is handled.

The public record is less kind. In April 2025 the FTC fined accessiBe $1,000,000 for misrepresenting that its AI product made websites WCAG-compliant, and for undisclosed paid endorsements. More than 800 businesses using overlay widgets were sued across 2023–24 — over a quarter of all digital accessibility lawsuits in that period — and sites carrying an overlay were sued at rates equal to or higher than sites with nothing at all. The National Federation of the Blind returned accessiBe's sponsorship and passed a resolution over the company's practices.

The structural problem

Set the litigation record aside for a moment; the business model has a flaw of its own. An overlay is priced by your traffic — accessWidget lists $490/year for 5,000 monthly visits, $1,490 for 30,000, $3,990 for 100,000. Your accessibility bill goes up because more people came to your site.

And the repairs live in their JavaScript, not your HTML. Stop paying and every fix leaves with the script. That is not an oversight they will patch, because handing you the corrected code would end the subscription.

The alternative

Find the failures, fix them in your own markup, and own the result. The list below is generated by the same checks a professional audit starts with, and every finding names the WCAG 2.2 criterion it fails so you can verify it against the standard rather than trusting us.

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