What accessibility overlays and widgets can't fix on your store

What an overlay changes for your shoppers

Shoppers who need bigger text or more contrast usually have it already, on their own computers. Some of it comes built in, and some is software they add. They set it up themselves.

Some people with low vision choose how pages look to them. That’s from W3C, which writes the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Your part is pages that still work with those settings. That’s something you get to do for them.

Some overlays get in the way. They can “override user settings”, so a shopper’s own setup is gone and they’re left with the overlay’s. The European Disability Forum and the International Association of Accessibility Professionals said so together in May 2023.

Some overlays also notice a screen reader and switch on settings for it, the fact sheet says. That tells the store the person has a disability. Your customer came to buy a jacket, not to tell a website that.

Where a script can’t be counted on

To be fair, the fact sheet says “a non-trivial array of accessibility problems can be repaired” by a script. But it names places where repair isn’t reliable. Here’s what has to go right for the shopper in each:

• Picture descriptions: a shopper using a screen reader needs words that say what a product photo shows.
• Forms: a shopper who gets an error on a sign-up form needs to know which field to correct.
• Keyboard access: a keyboard shopper needs to reach the size picker and the add to cart button.
• Content that changes after the page loads: a shopper needs to use the cart drawer that slides open when they add a product.
• Files and media: a shopper needs to use a size guide saved as a PDF, and a product video.

Repairs can also slow your pages down, it adds. And they can change a page unexpectedly for shoppers using a screen reader.

Here’s how we see it: a script has to find what’s wrong before it can change it. Even tools built only to test a page can’t catch everything: “Human judgement is required.” That’s from W3C’s guide “Selecting Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools.”

And a picture’s description “needs to be determined by the author”, W3C’s Images Tutorial says. That’s you, the person who knows the product.

Does an overlay make a store meet WCAG?

The fact sheet’s answer is no: “full compliance cannot be achieved with an overlay”, and an overlay “cannot eliminate legal risk”. Overlays aren’t “a substitute for fixing the website itself”, the May 2023 joint statement adds.

One overlay seller claimed its tool could make any website meet WCAG. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleged those claims were “false, misleading, or unsubstantiated”. Its complaint says the seller’s “own testers identified errors on nearly all websites tested.”

The seller agreed to pay $1 million, without admitting or denying the allegations. The FTC issued its final order in April 2025. Under it, the seller can’t claim its products make any website meet WCAG, or keep it meeting WCAG, without “competent and reliable evidence”.

In 2021, a federal court in New York heard suits against two stores that had hired that seller. It let both go on. In one, a blind shopper’s expert found barriers still there, though the store paid for monthly audits. In the other, three of the seller’s audits had said the site met the accessibility standard.

Two cases can’t speak for every case. But here an overlay didn’t end the suits, and its seller’s own audits didn’t settle whether the stores worked for shoppers with disabilities.

Who says overlays aren’t the answer

More than 1,000 people signed the fact sheet. Some do this work. Some helped write the standards or build screen readers. Some are lawyers for disabled people, and some use the web with a disability. They back repairs made “at the source of the original error”.

Illinois’s Department of Innovation and Technology says its accessibility office “currently advises against including overlays on State websites.” Its guide adds that “accessibility overlays have a negative reputation in much of the disability community.”

What a fix in your theme does instead

A fix in your theme changes the page itself. Many fixes are small. A form field gets a label tied to it. An icon button gets a name a screen reader can read out. A keyboard shopper lands in the cart drawer when it opens, and back where they were when it closes.

We work in the theme because a fix that’s part of the page is there for every shopper, whatever they browse with. Nothing extra loads. Nothing detects who’s browsing.

Here’s what we do. We make each fix in your theme. Your developer publishes each fix, or we do, once you say yes. Then we check each fix once it’s live.