Things we must avoid

Vendors and partners with no WCAG experience

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are going to be the key to making things accessible. These international standards inform:

Plug-ins and widgets that sound "too good to be true"

Beware of companies promising to make sites completely accessible, compliant, and immune from lawsuits with just a few lines of code. This just isn't possible, for several reasons. Disabled users have long said these tools don't actually help them, and can often make things worse.

The problem is that there is no way for any plugin or widget that is able to make a site accessible.

To be sure, there are many services and products out there aimed at increasing accessibility and usability of websites. There are some great organizations who have training and services. Deque is one of the leading companies in this space.

There are also some services and products out there that are marketed as increasing accessibility, though they can't deliver. That kind of widget is also called an "overlay." On the surface, it looks neat and helpful, as it seems to offer some neat options. But among people with disabilities who use assistive technologies, the sentiment has been that these overlay widgets do not help. Instead, disabled users say that these widgets make things worse: they hijack your settings and make it more difficult and less accessible. Many of these overlays and widgets have been marketed as being able to be "ADA-compliant" and able to "prevent lawsuits."

The products say the comply with the ADA, but the ADA itself has no criteria

Thing is, the ADA does not have any measurable criteria with one can comply or not comply (despite accessibility specialists begging for standards of that sort).

The products can still get companies sued

One of the big selling points that these companies use in selling their products is the idea that they make you "ADA-compliant," and that you can't get sued. But that is just not true. According to UsableNet, "[more than] 900 businesses with an accessibility widget or overlay on their website received a lawsuit in 2023. Businesses using accessibility widgets received 933 lawsuits in 2023, a 62% increase from 2022, when we found 575. Many of these lawsuits list the widget features and functionality as accessibility barriers, as well as typical WCAG failures."

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People with disabilities have criticized overlays

People with disabilities have said that these widgets and products have made their experiences more difficult, rather than easier. These products can hijack their settings and override their preferences, causing for a frustrating and infurating experience.

No code or A.I. solution can catch everything

There are many things that cannot be targeted or fixed by code. There are many accessibility considerations that can only be implemented by humans. For example, code cannot determine if a link's text description makes sense to a human outside of the context of the text that comes before or after it. A code base or A.I. can't determine if a human can hear a link and know where that link will take them. That will have to be done by humans.

These are a PR nightmare

Some of the companies have been defensive of critics, going so far as to sue accessibility specialists who recommend against these products. For these reasons, many accessibility specialists have actively boycotted any organization or company that uses such a widget.

Organizations that have used these have been pressured not to use them. Some have not only removed the overlays, but have apologized.

Resources about overlays

Here are some resources explaining these widgets further: