AccessiFire ADA Compliance Solution vs. Overlays
- Are screen overlay products effective for making websites appear to be ADA compliant?
There has been a lot of buzz in the marketplace discussing why web accessibility overlays are not compliant. We can say for certain that overlay companies pose their solutions as being compliant, when in fact they are not. Research shows overlay only handles up to 25% of the WCAG requirements leaving the remaining 75% inaccessible and vulnerable to lawsuits. Why? Those overlays only handle the more simple requirements which are the CSS adjustments of a website. For instance, color contrast ratios, stop animations, larger cursors, font colors and sizing, and more. Where accessiBe differs from other layover tools is that it handles both the foreground CSS adjustments and the 75% ‘heavy background lifting’ WCAG 2.1 AA requirements like Aria attributes, assistive technology compatibility, alt tags for images, contextual understanding Ai that assigns all the correct elemental structures like pop-ups, forms, icons, buttons, and website behaviors.
If you install a screen overlay product, will you be less likely or more likely to become the victim of an ADA non-compliance lawsuit?
If a website owner has a layover tool that does not handle the ‘heavy background lifting’ as stated above, they are definitely at a greater risk of being served a demand letter or a lawsuit.
Reports have been received from people in the disabled community in tandem with law firms around the US are grouping together to find websites that are using layovers and targetting them with ADA lawsuits and demand letters as they too know those layovers are not making their websites accessible.
When using a screen overlay product, can site visitors use their own assistive technology?
In most cases, yes they can however that does not mean that it will be completely compatible with all assistive technologies like screen readers or keyboard navigation only. In addition, there are certain layover tools that have screen readers embedded within their ‘solutions’ which is purely a marketing gimmick, this is actually counterproductive since those with disabilities have their own assistive technologies and the embedded screen reader’s conflict with their own technologies.
