Overlays are not the solution to your accessibility problem

In the long run they will hurt, not help your approach to people with disabilities

Authors note: Because of Medium’s refusal to address its accessibility issues for both authors and readers, I’ve moved my last three years of blogs to Substack. Please sign up there for notices of all new articles. Also, I will be updating older articles (like this one) and the updates will only be published on Substack. Thank you for your continued readership and support.

Accessibility overlays are tools that detect and dynamically repair HTML accessibility issues in non-mobile environments. And what accessibility manager in their right mind WOULDN’T want a solution that does that? Write an annual check and presto change-o your site is accessible which means you don’t get sued. Unfortunately that’s a little too good to be true.

How can you fix what you can’t detect?

The industry is largely in agreement that only 30ish % of accessibility issues can be detected through code analysis. That means 70 % of accessibility issues can’t even be *detected* via code analysis much less fixed.

How can an overlay:

• Make an non-responsive website responsive