Accessibility
Do accessibility overlay widgets actually work?
No. Overlays cannot fix semantic problems because they cannot know what your images depict or whether your headings are meaningful. Hundreds of US lawsuits have been filed against sites that had one installed, and many disabled users report they interfere with the assistive technology already configured.
What an overlay cannot do
- Know whether alt text is accurate, or write it where it is missing
- Make a custom dropdown keyboard-operable if it was never built to be
- Fix heading structure that does not describe the content beneath it
- Make error messages useful, or announce them to a screen reader
- Remove the underlying WCAG failures that create legal exposure
Why they can make things worse
Screen reader users arrive with their software configured to their preferences. An overlay that overrides focus handling or injects its own controls fights that configuration, which is why the objection is loudest from the users the product claims to serve.
What to spend the money on instead
An audit and remediation of the actual failures. It costs more than a monthly widget subscription and it produces a site that works, which is both the ethical outcome and the one that withstands a claim.
The longer version
This answer is deliberately short. If you want the full treatment, Website accessibility, without the compliance theatre covers it in about 5 minutes — free, ungated, written from client work.
Who answered this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan — fifteen live client sites, six of them stores taking real payments. These answers come from those projects rather than from a content brief. More about how I work, or ask me something directly.