My anti-overlay client letter

In agency and freelance web development, relatively often I'm asked by clients what I think about accessibility overlays, or asked to implement them.

I despise accessibility overlays, and get really quite upset when they're mentioned in a serious context. Unfortunately, getting increasingly upset and angry doesn't do a very good job of informing clients about why they're often a bad idea and why they shouldn't be trusted.

In many cases I can explain fairly succinctly the issues with overlays and that’s where the conversation finishes. Sometimes though the conversation escalates and my initial advice is ignored. For those circumstances I’ve put together a ‘serious letter’ that is designed to put all our cards on the table and have a serious tone.

It’s a carefully considered, standardised letter to explain why we don't like overlays, list some of the facts, and to try to convince a client that they're rarely a good option for them. I'm publishing this as it may be helpful to others in the same situation! Read to the end if you want a bit more context/explanation.

Hi [client name],

We strongly recommend against trying to solve accessibility issues on websites using 'accessibility overlays'. This will be a slightly long email to explain why that's the case and to make you aware of the risks. If you have any questions or want to discuss further then let me know and I'd be happy to do so.

An 'accessibility overlay' is a product that typically provides JavaScript code that you install on your website with the goal of improving accessibility. These services can provide various functionality, including the promise of automatic fixes and widgets with user controls. In rare cases they can be helpful tools, but evidence shows that they are generally not sufficient to substantially improve website accessibility, and cannot replace making sure a website is built accessibly. Web accessibility is a complex field and at the moment there are no tools or services that can reliably fix all issues. Believe me, I'd love it if there was! Evidence shows that even with cutting-edge technology (including AI) only about 30% of accessibility issues can be found without human intervention.

Some overlay companies often claim "ADA compliance" or "complete accessibility", making false claims that their tools can fix website accessibility completely but that is not the case. They are often marketed as a quick-fix solution to avoid legal risk, or to avoid spending time on website accessibility.

From a user accessibility perspective, many of the representations of 'fixing' problems some of these solutions claim to do are misconstrued, false or greatly exaggerated. As someone who works in the accessibility field I know more disabled users who intentionally block these solutions than rely on them, thanks to many cases of them causing more harm than good.

From a business and reputational perspective, many of the big accessibility overlay companies are considered bad actors within the accessibility industry. Many companies have established history that can include untrue claims, falsifying evidence, paying for praise and reviews, and for silencing critics via 'SLAPP' lawsuits. Some of the largest companies in the industry have or continue to engage in some of these.

The legal protection promises are why many people look to and consider accessibility overlays. I would first clarify that I am not a lawyer, do not have legal experience, and this is not legal advice. Accessibility laws exist to provide equal access and to prevent companies from discriminating — intentionally or not — against those with disabilities. Examples include the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the European Accessibility Act. In many countries there is accessibility legislation that applies to websites, and requires websites to meet a certain level of accessibility.

Particularly in the USA, people can sue website owners for not providing equal access, which the ADA provides precedence for. This has become more frequent in the previous few years. Whilst many lawsuits are from individuals genuinely seeking equal access, you will find these don't come 'out of the blue' and people will seek assistance and make complaints first.
Extremely unfortunately, there is also a large industry of 'malicious' accessibility lawsuits. These come from law firms targeting small companies in bad faith to exploit accessibility legislation for their gain. The purpose of these malicious accessibility lawsuits is to find anything that can be described as an accessibility issue in your website, regardless of how valid that is. Typically these law firms offer to settle, almost immediately, for a substantial fee.

As accessibility overlays cannot detect and fix all accessibility issues, they cannot prevent the circumstances that fuel these lawsuits. This means that regardless of your overlay, malicious law firms can definitely still find issues to sue you for, including violations caused by the overlay itself. I have seen no real evidence that an accessibility overlay genuinely reduces the likelihood of an accessibility lawsuit. In fact, some early research seems to suggest a potential increase in accessibility lawsuits following installation of a handful of particular accessibility overlays as their weaknesses and limitations are well-understood and easily identified. You will also find that several overlay companies have been cited in lawsuits as a reason for worse accessibility, and even caused issues that weren't present before installation.

Ultimately it's up to you, but our suggestion is that accessibility is always best solved at the source, and audited by a full manual accessibility test. If accessibility is considered during design, development and content input then not only are you providing the best experience to your users, but also your website is in the best state it can be for accessibility. This reduces legal risk, your reliance on third-parties and in many cases cost. By providing an "Accessibility Statement" page you can also allow people to contact and inform you of issues without escalation. The W3C provides an Accessibility Statement generation tool.

Regardless of what you opt for, we will continue to implement accessibility in our designs, development, and content input as is our best practice. We would encourage you to also consider accessibility when inserting content, and we are more than happy to support you and your team with that. We can offer training, accessibility testing, and recommend trustworthy third-parties who can provide audits or legal support.

We can add the code for an overlay to the website if you provide it and instruct us to do so, but this would be against our advice. If you choose to do so, we will discuss next steps including steps to ensure legal responsibility is clear.

Here are some resources that may be of interest to you regarding this, additionally I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

• Include relevant sources here. More details and examples below.

Let me know how you'd like to proceed, if you have any questions, or if we can provide any support in the accessibility of your website.

Best regards

The first thing I want to say is that you and I are not the intended recipient of this email. It's unemotional, business-y, overly focused on legal risk and business practice, and not very focused on the difficulties that disabled users actually face using the web.

Most of the clients who speak to me about accessibility overlays are founders of mostly ecommerce startups in the US so the tone and wording of this email is focused on what works for them. Before this point there's likely been conversation and discussion that is a lot more casual and focused on the benefits of accessibility. But when I'm sending this email, I want to get serious and convince them against the route they're thinking of, appealing to the business and legal side to get the message really heard.

I've found that for most of the clients I’ve worked with, explaining overlays in unemotional detail, justification, and evidence has the best success. That's also why there's a lot more of a focus on the legal side than I would like. You shouldn't be using these things because of the harm they cause, but when their legal counsel or other company founders say they need this, I find going for this kind of email works much more effectively.

It is very long, and that’s something I’ve struggled a little with. I would prefer to be more succinct, but for me I’ve had the most success putting everything on the table in clear detail, despite the length. The focus is to get all the information needed in there and then the ball’s in the court of our client.

I think most of the email is pretty self-explanatory, but there are a few other things I've put attention into that I want to explicitly call out.

You'll notice that I don't refer to any specific overlay companies anywhere in this post. I do generally customise this email more, focusing on the track record of any companies that have been mentioned. For posting this publicly however, I want to be quite careful on what I say against any companies in particular. If any specific overlay companies have been mentioned to you, I would suggest doing some research and tailoring the email more.

Something I think is crucial is a list of sources at the end of the email. Whilst earlier drafts of this post included some of my go-to links, these all reference particular companies and to be quite honest, SLAPP tactics work. I have faced legal threats about my blog before, and I’m eager to avoid it again. That really sucks, but the key point is I’d recommend doing some research and finding articles that are relevant. I’ve read some interesting articles from big publications like The New York Times, Forbes and Wired that you may consider. Adrian Roselli also has some very detailed articles about potentially poor practices and analysis about particular overlay companies. I also often include links to ongoing or past lawsuits — often class action — to show this is a very active topic.

Anyway, if you got this far I hope this is useful to you! Keep up the good fight against Accessibility Overlays, and make sure to add your signature to the Overlay Fact Sheet if you haven't already!

Thank you so much to Adrian Roselli who kindly took some time to review this article and give me some of his thoughts and advice. I cannot thank him enough for helping me with it.