You may have seen it on other websites: a small round button, often with a wheelchair or person icon, floating in a corner of the screen. Click it and a panel opens with options to make text bigger, change colours or pause animations. Companies that sell these tools often say that one line of code makes your website accessible and helps you meet the law. If you have a small business or a public website, that offer is tempting. This article explains calmly what these tools are, what they do and do not do, what regulators and disability organisations have said about them, and what to do instead if you want a site that works for everyone.
What an accessibility overlay is
An accessibility overlay, also called a widget or toolbar, is a piece of software from another company that you add to your website. You paste one line of code into your site, or install an app or plugin in your website builder, and from then on the overlay loads on every page. Well-known names include accessiBe, UserWay, EqualWeb and AudioEye, and there are many smaller ones, some of them free plugins.
Most overlays have two parts:
- A toolbar for visitors. The floating button opens a menu with settings such as larger text, higher contrast, a more readable font, highlighted links, extra spacing or stopped animations.
- Automatic repairs. In the background, a script (a small program that runs in the visitor’s browser) tries to detect problems in your page and change them on the fly. For example, it might add a description to an image without one, or give a name to a button that has none. Some vendors say they use artificial intelligence for this.
The important detail is where these repairs happen. They do not change your website itself. They change the page in each visitor’s browser, every time it loads, for as long as the script runs.
Some of these companies also sell other services, such as audits by people or help with fixing code. Those are different from the widget, and this article is about the widget.
What overlays promise
The marketing for these tools has often promised that a site becomes compliant with accessibility rules automatically, within hours or days, without changing your site. Some offers mention protection against lawsuits or a certificate or badge to show on your site.
It helps to know what "compliant" usually refers to. Most accessibility laws in Europe and elsewhere build on WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines from the W3C (the organisation that writes web standards). WCAG has dozens of requirements, and many of them depend on meaning and purpose: whether a picture description is correct, whether a link text tells you where it goes, whether an error message helps you fix the mistake. Software can check some of these. It cannot decide all of them on your behalf.
What overlays do, and what they cannot do
To be fair, some toolbar settings can help some people. Someone who wants bigger text or stronger contrast can get it with one click. But the people who need these changes most often already have them, because browsers, phones and computers offer them built in: zoom, larger default text, high contrast or dark modes, reduced motion and screen readers (software that reads the screen aloud). People who rely on these settings use them on every website, not only on yours.
What an overlay cannot do reliably:
- Know what your images mean. A script can guess "a person at a desk", but not that the photo shows your new shop or that the chart shows bookings doubling.
- Rewrite unclear content. It cannot make your text, instructions or error messages easier to understand.
- Fix how your pages are built. A menu that does not work with a keyboard, a form whose fields are in a confusing order or a pop-up that traps the keyboard usually needs changes in the site’s code.
- Add captions or transcripts. Videos and podcasts need captions and transcripts written or checked by people.
- Fix your documents. PDFs and other downloads are usually not touched at all.
- Keep working when the script does not. If the script loads slowly, is blocked by a browser extension or fails, the visitor gets the original page with all its problems.
There is another concern that disabled people raise again and again: overlays can get in the way. A screen reader already has its own way of moving through a page. When an overlay changes the page or adds its own screen reader mode, the two can conflict, and the visitor ends up with something less predictable than before.
What regulators and disability organisations say
Several independent voices have looked closely at these tools.
- The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In January 2025 the FTC announced a complaint against accessiBe, saying the company had claimed its accessWidget tool could make any website compliant with WCAG and that this claim was false, misleading or unsupported. The FTC also said that reviews and articles praising the product had been presented as independent while the company was connected to them. accessiBe agreed to pay 1 million US dollars and not to make such claims without evidence, and the FTC approved the order as final in April 2025 (TechCrunch, summary of the final order).
- The European Disability Forum and IAAP. In 2023 the European Disability Forum, which represents organisations of disabled people across Europe, and the International Association of Accessibility Professionals published a joint statement. It says that overlays do not make a website accessible or compliant with European accessibility law, that they are not a substitute for fixing the website itself, and that some interfere with the assistive technology disabled people use (EDF statement).
- Accessibility professionals. Hundreds of accessibility specialists, including people who help write web standards and disabled users, have signed the Overlay Fact Sheet, which explains the limits of these tools and asks site owners not to rely on them.
In the United States, where lawsuits about website accessibility are common, a widget has also not kept businesses out of court. UsableNet, a company that follows these cases, reported that more than a thousand lawsuits in 2024 were filed against businesses that already had a widget installed (UsableNet).
None of this means that the people who installed a widget did something wrong. Most did it in good faith, because the offer sounded like a quick way to help. The point is simply that the widget does not do the work it is often expected to do.
What disabled users report
The people overlays are meant to help are often the most critical. In a 2021 survey of web accessibility practitioners by WebAIM, a non-profit organisation at Utah State University, 67% of respondents rated these tools as not at all or not very effective. Among respondents with disabilities that rose to 72%, and only 2.4% rated them very effective (WebAIM survey).
Common experiences include:
- "I already have my settings." People who need large text, high contrast or a screen reader have set up their own devices. A toolbar that works differently on every site is one more thing to learn.
- Surprises for screen reader users. Extra announcements, changed page structure or a pop-up asking whether you use a screen reader.
- The real problem is still there. An unlabelled form field or a checkout that does not work with a keyboard still does not work.
Some blind users go as far as installing a browser extension such as AccessiByeBye, made by Pneuma Solutions, that blocks overlays on every site they visit.
What to do instead
The approach that works is less exciting than one line of code, but it lasts: fix the problems in the website itself, check the result and be open about what is left. Most small sites can make good progress in a few weeks.
- Find the problems. Start with an automatic check of your most important pages, such as the home page, a product or service page, the contact form and the checkout. Automatic checks find part of the problems, roughly a third to a half.
- Fix the most common ones first. Missing image descriptions, low-contrast text, buttons and links without a name, form fields without a label, a missing page language and jumbled headings. The repair guides explain each one in plain language.
- Test what software cannot. Try your site with only a keyboard, using our ten-minute keyboard test. Read your image descriptions and link texts out loud and ask whether they make sense.
- Ask your web builder or developer for real fixes. If you use a theme or builder, ask the vendor whether it follows WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 at level AA. For a developer, the technical details in a check report are a good starting point.
- Publish an accessibility statement. Explain what you checked, what still needs work and how people can reach you if they get stuck. Our statement guide walks you through it.
- Keep checking. Every new page, image and form can bring new problems, so check again after changes.
If you want to offer visitors extra options, remember that the best "toolbar" is a site that works well with the settings people already have: text that stays readable when zoomed to 200%, layouts that adapt to larger text and animations that stop when the device asks for reduced motion.
How to remove a widget safely
If you have a widget today and decide to remove it, a careful order avoids surprises.
- Find where it is loaded. Look in your website builder’s app or plugin list, your theme settings, a tag manager such as Google Tag Manager, or the code in your site’s header. It is often one line that loads a script from the vendor’s web address.
- Check what you rely on. Some sites link their accessibility statement or contact details only from the widget. Make sure that information also exists on your own pages.
- Fix the main problems in your site first. If the widget was adding image descriptions or button names on the fly, those disappear when you remove it. Run a check, fix the most important problems in the site itself, and then remove the widget.
- Remove the code or uninstall the app. Then load your pages in a private browser window to confirm the floating button is gone everywhere.
- Cancel the subscription and remove any badges or claims about compliance that came with it.
- Update your accessibility statement and cookie list. Some widgets set cookies or appear in your privacy information.
- Check again to see where you stand now and what to fix next.
When ibin finds a widget on a page, the report notes it and explains that it does not fix the problems listed. The problems in the report are in the website itself, so that is where they need fixing.
Check your site without the shortcut
Check a page for free with ibin to see which problems the automatic checks find, who they affect and where they are on the page, with a repair guide for each one. Start with your most visited page, fix what the report shows, and then try the keyboard test. Sign in to check up to 200 pages of the same site for free and get an email when it is done.
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