Looking for an accessibility overlay alternative?
An overlay is a JavaScript widget that promises to repair your site's accessibility from the visitor's browser, typically for around $490 a year. We do not sell one, resell one, bundle one or recommend one — and this page is the evidence for why. What we do instead is find the barriers with screenshots, then fix the code.
Scan one page free
Give us a URL and a work email. You get a plain-English PDF: every barrier automated testing can detect on that page, each one photographed on your own site, with what it costs to put right.
One page, no account, no card. Full-site scan (up to 150 pages): $49 — see pricing.
The public record on overlays
| Evidence | Detail |
|---|---|
| FTC v. accessiBe | The US Federal Trade Commission required accessiBe to pay $1,000,000 over deceptive claims that its widget could make a website meet WCAG "within 48 hours", and over paid advertising presented as independent reviews. Announced January 2025; the final order was approved in April 2025. |
| Sued anyway | Over 800 businesses running an overlay were sued regardless in US accessibility litigation during 2023–2024. The widget on the page did not stop the claim. |
| Practitioner consensus | The public Overlay Fact Sheet, signed by hundreds of accessibility professionals — including disabled users of assistive technology — advises against overlays, and documents cases where the widget actively interfered with screen readers. |
Why a widget cannot do the job
An overlay is a script that loads in your visitor's browser and guesses at repairs after the fact. That places a hard ceiling on it, and the ceiling is not about how clever the script is:
- It cannot write your product description. A missing image description has to say what the picture shows. Only someone who can see the picture and knows the product can write that.
- It cannot restructure your checkout. A form whose fields are not associated with their labels, or a modal that traps the keyboard, is a structural problem in your markup. The script can shuffle attributes; it cannot rebuild the flow.
- It cannot know what your icon means. An unlabelled icon button is unlabelled because the meaning lives in your head, not in the DOM.
- It can make things worse. Assistive technology already has a model of the page. A script rewriting ARIA underneath it is a documented source of new bugs for the very users it claims to serve.
- The broken code stays broken. Turn the subscription off and you are exactly where you started — because nothing in your repository ever changed.
What we do instead
| Question | Overlay widget | BarriScan |
|---|---|---|
| What changes on your site? | A script tag. Your code is untouched. | Your code. Fixes land in your theme or repository and stay there. |
| What do you get to look at? | A dashboard and a badge. | Every finding in plain English, with the element boxed in a screenshot of your own page. |
| What happens if you stop paying? | The site reverts. | Nothing. The fixes are yours. |
| What is claimed about the law? | Historically, a great deal — see the FTC order above. | Nothing. We report findings and fix them; compliance is a legal judgement, not a product feature. |
| What does it cost? | Roughly $490 a year, indefinitely. | $49 for a full-site scan; fixes from $499 once. See pricing. |
The price rhyme is deliberate: about one year of an overlay subscription buys a quick-fix pack in which real developers repair the critical findings on your site and prove it with a verification re-scan.
If you already have an overlay installed
- Run the free scan. The scan tests the rendered page — the overlay's changes included — so you see what a browser actually delivers to your users.
- Read the findings against what you were sold. Every finding names the WCAG criterion and shows the element.
- Decide with evidence in hand. We are happy to be the second opinion; we are not going to tell you a widget removes legal risk, because nothing does.
Not legal advice. Whether your business meets the EAA or any national law is a judgement for you and your advisers. Neither an overlay nor a scan settles it.
What a scan can and cannot prove
Automated coverage notice: this report was produced by automated testing (axe-core engine). Automated tools find only part of all accessibility barriers — independent studies measure roughly 30–57% of issues, depending on the site. A clean automated result is not proof of accessibility, and this report does not certify compliance with the EAA, EN 301 549, or WCAG. Full coverage requires a human expert audit, which we offer as a separate service.
The long version, with the studies and worked examples: what automated testing actually finds.
Keep reading
- The EAA, plainly: who it covers, the deadlines, and what enforcement really looks like.
- What automated testing finds: why our automation is also partial, and we say so.
- How BarriScan works — and the list of things we refuse to do.