Accessibility Overlays & the EAA:
Why "One Line of Code" Is Not Compliance

ftc-action

In January 2025, the US Federal Trade Commission charged accessiBe — the largest overlay vendor — with misrepresenting that its widget could make websites compliant with accessibility standards. In April 2025 the FTC approved a final order requiring accessiBe to pay $1 million and barring it from claiming its automated products make any site WCAG-compliant unless it has evidence to support the claim.

Think about what this means: the company selling "guaranteed compliance" was itself sanctioned for deceptive advertising. If your pitch to clients includes an overlay's compliance claims, you are repeating marketing language a competition authority has already ruled misleading.

lawsuit-data

The United States is where overlay failure is best documented, because ADA website lawsuits are filed there by the thousand. In 2025, 3,948 ADA web accessibility lawsuits were filed — up nearly 24% over 2024. Roughly 20-25% of these targeted websites that had an accessibility overlay installed at the time.

Plaintiffs' firms actively screen for overlays: the widget signals that a company knew about accessibility and chose a shortcut. Installing an overlay does not reduce litigation exposure — industry reporting suggests it can mark a site as a better target.

More than 900 accessibility practitioners and disabled users have signed the Overlay Fact Sheet stating that overlays frequently make sites harder to use with assistive technology, not easier. The people who rely on screen readers are the ones who pay for broken auto-fixes.

eaa-position

For agencies working in the EU, the relevant law since 28 June 2025 is the European Accessibility Act. It requires e-commerce, banking, transport, and other covered services to conform with EN 301 549 — which incorporates WCAG 2.1 AA — and to publish an accessibility statement. Market surveillance authorities can require corrective action; member state penalty frameworks include fines up to €3 million in some countries.

The European Commission has stated that overlays alone do not achieve EAA compliance, and consumer organisations including the European Disability Forum have issued statements against marketing them as such. An overlay cannot fix the structural issues the EAA targets: missing keyboard support in checkout flows, inaccessible documents, unlabeled form fields in booking systems. Those require code changes.

The practical position for a small agency is simple: an overlay installed on top of a non-conformant site leaves the site non-conformant. The money is spent, the statement cannot honestly be published, and the underlying risk remains.

what-works

None of this means automated tools are useless. It means they belong in the right place: detection, not remediation. Run a scanner to find issues, then fix them in the code. That workflow costs nothing extra and produces a site that actually conforms.

A realistic plan for a small agency portfolio:

• Scan every client site for the common automated-detectable failures (missing alt text, unlabeled inputs, contrast, heading structure). • Fix those in templates and components once — every page on the theme benefits. • Test keyboard navigation and one screen reader pass on critical flows (checkout, contact, signup). • Publish an honest accessibility statement per site. • Re-scan after content updates or new plugins.

This takes hours per site, not months — and unlike a widget subscription, it ends. When you can show a clean scan and a documented process, you can also price it as a service line instead of paying for a badge.

Going Deeper

Real compliance comes from fixing your site, not from a widget. Our EAA checklist walks through 10 practical checks that take minutes each — start there.

Frequently Asked Questions