Why Accessibility Widgets Don’t Make Your Website Accessible
You know that little accessibility icon you sometimes see floating in the corner of a website?
An example of an accessibility widget or “overlay”. It is a blue circle with a human icon in the middle.
You click it and a menu pops up with options to increase the text size, change the contrast, highlight links, enable a screen reader mode and so on.
It looks like a good thing.
Except accessibility widgets (also known as accessibility overlays) aren't a shortcut to making a website accessible.
And in some cases, they can actually make things worse.
What is an accessibility widget?
An accessibility widget is a third-party tool added to a website, usually appearing as a small floating icon in the corner of the screen.
When someone opens it, they might be given options to change things such as text size, colour contrast, animations or the way content is displayed.
You'll also hear them described as “accessibility overlays” because they essentially add a layer of third-party code over an existing website.
The idea sounds appealing: install one tool and make your website more accessible.
The problem is that an accessibility overlay can't necessarily fix what's underneath.
Accessibility needs to be built into your website
If a form hasn't been labelled properly, the heading structure doesn't make sense, the website can't be navigated with a keyboard or an image is missing meaningful alt text, adding a toolbar to the corner of the screen doesn't magically solve those problems.
Website accessibility needs to be considered in the design and development of the website itself.
That means thinking about accessibility when you're choosing colours, creating the page structure, writing links, adding images, designing forms and deciding how interactions work.
It's not something to tack on at the end.
Disabled people often don't want accessibility overlays
This is probably the most important part.
These tools are supposedly there to help disabled people, but 72% of respondents with disabilities in a WebAIM survey rated accessibility overlays as either "not at all effective" or "not very effective".
Many disabled people already use their own assistive technology and settings, including screen readers, browser extensions, keyboard navigation, magnification and operating-system accessibility features.
An accessibility overlay can interfere with those tools rather than complement them.
There are even browser extensions designed specifically to block accessibility overlays - which is quite something when the people a tool is designed to help are installing another tool to get rid of it!
Accessibility widgets don't automatically make your website WCAG compliant
Accessibility widgets are sometimes sold as a quick way to make a website compliant with accessibility standards such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), but adding an accessibility widget to your website doesn't automatically make it WCAG compliant.
That's because accessibility standards cover much more than the handful of settings you'll find in an accessibility toolbar.
They consider how the website itself has been designed, structured, coded and written.
And having an overlay on your website doesn't automatically protect your organisation from accessibility-related legal action either.
In fact, websites using accessibility overlays have themselves been the subject of accessibility lawsuits.
In 2025, the US Federal Trade Commission took action against accessibility overlay company accessiBe over claims that its AI-powered tool could make websites WCAG compliant.
The company was ordered to pay $1 million, and the FTC's final order prevents it from making claims that its automated products can make any website WCAG compliant unless it has evidence to substantiate those claims.
What should you do instead of using an accessibility widget?
Build accessibility into the website itself!
If you're working with a web designer or developer, look for someone who understands accessibility and considers it throughout the website design process rather than relying on a third-party overlay afterwards.
An accessible website should consider things like:
Sufficient colour contrast
Logical heading structures
Properly labelled forms
Meaningful alt text
Visible focus states
Keyboard accessibility
Descriptive links and buttons
Readable typography
Semantic HTML
Captions and transcripts where needed
Does that mean accessibility widgets are always bad?
The important distinction is between giving people useful preferences and claiming that a widget can make an inaccessible website accessible.
Giving visitors options and flexibility isn't inherently a bad thing, but those controls shouldn't be used as a replacement for making the underlying website accessible in the first place.
If your website has poor colour contrast, for example, the solution shouldn't be to expect someone to find an accessibility widget and switch on a high-contrast mode.
The website should have sufficient colour contrast to begin with.
How can you make your website more accessible?
You don't necessarily need to rebuild your entire website overnight.
Start by looking at the foundations.
Check whether someone can navigate your website using only a keyboard. Review the contrast between your text and background colours. Make sure your headings follow a logical structure. Look at whether your links and buttons make sense out of context.
And review your images to make sure you're providing useful alternative text where it's needed.
You can also review the language you're using in links. I've written more about this in Why “Click Here” Is Bad for Accessibility.
Accessibility isn't one individual feature. It's the result of lots of design, content and development decisions working together.
Website accessibility should be part of good web design
Accessibility isn't something I add to a website once the design is finished.
It's part of how I approach the website from the beginning: from colour contrast and typography to navigation, content structure, interactions and calls to action.
Because ultimately, a website isn't doing its job if some of the people who need to use it can't.
If your website needs accessibility improvements, a few strategic updates or a complete redesign, I can help.