Over the last year or so, my opinion on accessibility plugins has shifted quite a bit. I used to think they were fine - not a solution, but fine. I considered them to be a nice add-on, that showed a commitment to accessibility. Now? Not so much.
Before I get into that (and why), let’s start at the beginning.
What is an accessibility plugin?
An accessibility plugin (sometimes called an overlay or widget) is a piece of software that sits on top of your existing website. You install it by adding a line of code, and a small icon, usually with a wheelchair symbol or a person figure, is added to your site. When a visitor clicks it, a panel opens up with toggle buttons that let them adjust things like text size, contrast, and font style.
The idea is that these adjustments help people with disabilities access your content more easily.
Which - I love. And is the reason why, when I first came across these plugins, I thought they were a great addition to a website.
The most well-known names in this space are accessiBe, UserWay, and AudioEye, EqualWeb, and - particularly in the UK - Recite Me. If you’ve spent any time browsing websites recently, you’ve almost certainly scrolled past that little floating icon.
Where accessibility plugins are useful
I want to be fair, because I’m not saying that these plugins are completely useless and don’t help anyone. If someone is in that interim period, where they’re noticing a change in their sight but haven’t updated the settings on their devices yet - then a toolbar like these can be useful. The same goes for some lifelong conditions. One of the better features these toolbars almost always offer, is the ability to switch text into a dyslexia-friendly font. For someone who hasn’t found a device-level solution that works for them yet, that’s not nothing.
What I’ll add though, is that there’s no meaningful data around how much these features actually get used.
What we do know is that whilst every toolbar essentially offers the same set of options (contrast toggles, text resizing, font changes etc) most users don’t want to rely on an overlay to navigate every site they visit - and they shouldn’t have to.
In the long run, people adjust the settings on their own devices instead. These settings follow them around every site, so they don’t need to manually make changes to every site they visit.
I don't want to disregard the nuance that they might help someone in that early window, before they've found what works for them. But that use case is very narrow - and it is a very long way from what these companies are actually selling. That's the real problem.
Accessibility toolbars get in the way of people who already know what they need
The thing that made me frustrated with toolbars, is the realisation that they actually get in the way of assistive technology. When testing out an accessibility toolbar on my own website, I asked a friend who uses JAWS (a screen-reader technology) to give me their feedback on the website. He told me everything was good, except that he kept hearing about this toolbar, which was pretty annoying for him, as each time he opened a new page, that was the first thing he had to listen to.
For a disabled user, who already has their tools that work for them, and know what they need, this is wild. For them to land on a website with an overlay that gets in the way of their systems, completely overrides the point of even having an accessibility toolbar.
Over 800 accessibility practitioners, developers, disability advocates and organisations have signed the Overlay Fact Sheet - a public statement documenting the harm overlays cause to disabled users and calling for their removal from websites entirely.
Overlayfactsheet.com - signatories include WCAG editors, and accessibility leads at the BBC, Google, Apple and Microsoft
That is not accessibility, that is an extra layer of friction for the exact people these tools are meant to serve. One blind software developer in the US, Steve Clower, published a full guide to blocking accessiBe after his apartment building adopted it for their website. For him, he didn’t want the “help” that the plugin offered - he wanted it out of his way.
What the law actually says
If your’re a UK business, your primary legal obligation around accessibility sits under the Equality Act 2010. As I covered in the article Accessibility Laws: Do they actually apply to your business if you provide goods or services, you have a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments so that disabled people can access them.
And if you trade with or sell to customers in the EU, the European Accessibility Act has applied to you since June 2025.
Here is something you should know about both of these: neither of them accepts an overlay as a valid compliance solution.
"Claims that a website can be made fully compliant without manual intervention are not realistic, since no automated tool can cover all the WCAG 2.1 level A and AA criteria."
European Commission - official statement on overlays, December 2023
This matters because a lot of plugin marketing leans heavily into legal compliance as the selling point, implying that installing their widget protects you. Under UK and European law, it does not.
The claims accessibility plugin companies make
Here’s some of the marketing language that these companies use, because it’s worth looking at directly.
"Within 48 hours, after installing just a single line of code, your site is fully accessible and compliant, just like that."
accessiBe — archived marketing copy
Promising customers "full WCAG coverage" and the ability to make a site "completely ADA-compliant" — with the additional claim that it would make a site "lawsuit-free."
UserWay — documented direct marketing email
One line of code, fully accessible, no legal risk - what an appealing pitch. The problem is, it doesn’t hold up.
In the US - where accessibility litigation is far more common than in the UK, and where these companies do most of their business - the consequences of these claims have started catching up with them. The Federal Trade Commission fined accessiBe $1 million for making false claims that its tool could make any website WCAG compliant. Separately, UserWay is facing a class action lawsuit from a customer who was served with an accessibility lawsuit just six months after installing the widget, and found the company's promised legal support amounted to a generic PDF.
Like most cases of lawsuits, these aren’t something small business owners need to worry about - but they show you something important. When companies who are selling you a compliance solution are getting fined for false advertising about that very thing, how reliable is their solution?
Even if it worked - it wouldn’t be enough
Here’s what drives me nuts about these plugins. Even if we accepted for the sake of argument, that a plugin could make a website fully accessible (which, if we’re relying on a plugin - it doesn’t) it would still do nothing to make your business accessible.
Your brand is bigger than your website. Accessibility means thinking about:
- Your colour palette and if there’s sufficient contrast.
- The fonts you’ve chosen
- The text size in use
- If your PDFs are accessible
- How readable your flyers are
- Whether your Instagram carousels have alt text
- Whether your email newsletters can be read by screen readers
- If someone with motor difficulties can complete your contact form
- Whether the language you use is plain and clear
A floating widget on your website does absolutely nothing for any of that.
Accessibility has to be woven into every touchpoint your business has with the people it serves. It’s not easy. It’s not quick. There is no shortcut, no one-line-of-code fix, no plugin that covers all of these aspects.
The companies selling these plugins sell themselves as the solution, because it’s easier to sell that than to tell the honest truth - that accessibility is a practice, not a product.
The most frustrating part is that most website accessibility issues are relatively easy fixes. Test your brand colours for sufficient contrast. Choose a readable font. Write alt for the images that need them.
If those things aren't meeting accessibility requirements - fix them. Work with a developer who’s going to structure everything correctly, instead of popping a plugin on top to plaster over the issues.
That work is real. It lasts. And it doesn’t interfere with your customers' assistive technology.
My recommendation
Don’t bother.
I know that’s a blunt answer, but it’s how I feel.
Accessibility plugins don’t make your website accessible. They don’t cover your legal obligations under the Equality Act or the EAA. They literally get in the way of disabled users who already have the tools they need. And they do nothing for your business as a whole - your social content, your documents, your branding, and your other marketing materials.
Spend that subscription money on something that actually make a difference. Get an accessibility audit. Review of your branding. Spend an hour with someone who can help you understand where the real gaps are, and what’s worth prioritising.
Accessibility will never be covered with a widget. It needs to be built in from the beginning. And if it wasn’t - it can still be fixed. But let’s do it properly.