What courts and regulators say about accessibility overlays

What is an accessibility overlay?

An accessibility overlay is a JavaScript widget that loads on top of your website. It typically adds a floating button (often a wheelchair icon) that opens a menu of options: increase font size, change contrast, highlight links, enable a screen reader mode.

The promise is appealing: install one script tag, and your website becomes accessible. No code changes. No developer required. Compliance in minutes.

If you run a Shopify store, you’ve almost certainly seen these apps. The Shopify App Store lists several overlay products with thousands of installs and high star ratings. They’re marketed as the fastest path to ADA and WCAG compliance.

The record says otherwise.

The FTC weighed in

In January 2025, the Federal Trade Commission ordered accessiBe, the largest accessibility overlay vendor, to pay $1 million over claims that its accessWidget could make any website WCAG compliant.^* The final order, approved in April 2025, bars the company from making that claim without evidence.^*

This was not a fringe ruling. It was the primary federal consumer protection agency stating, on the record, that overlay-based compliance claims are deceptive.

Courts are rejecting overlays

Multiple U.S. courts have ruled that the presence of an overlay does not constitute ADA compliance:

• In Angeles v. Grace Products (S.D.N.Y. 2021), the defendant had hired accessiBe to bring its site into compliance and audit it monthly; the court held the claim was not moot and let the case proceed.^*
• In Quezada v. U.S. Wings (S.D.N.Y. 2021), the defendant had bought a year of accessiBe, the plaintiff’s expert still found barriers, and the court declined to dismiss.^*
• Murphy v. Eyebobs (W.D. Pa. 2021), a class action against a retailer running the accessiBe overlay, ended in a court-approved settlement that required an accessibility team, a policy, training and a consultant.^*
• Across dozens of cases, plaintiffs have successfully argued that overlays address surface-level presentation without fixing the underlying code, and courts have agreed.

The legal consensus is clear: an overlay is not a fix. It is a cosmetic layer that does not change the HTML, ARIA attributes, or keyboard behavior of your site.

The 2025 lawsuit data

By EcomBack’s count, 22.6% of ADA website lawsuits in the first half of 2025, 456 suits, were filed against websites that already had an overlay installed,^* and the full-year figure was 983, a quarter of all suits^* (the full 2025 numbers are here). Having an overlay did not prevent the lawsuit. In some cases, attorneys have argued that the overlay itself introduces new accessibility barriers.

The Shopify App Store problem

For Shopify merchants, overlays feel like a natural solution. You browse the App Store, find an overlay app with 4.5 stars and hundreds of reviews, install it, and assume you’re covered. The app listing might even use language like “ADA compliant” or “WCAG 2.1 AA.”

This is the scenario the FTC sanctioned accessiBe for. High App Store ratings reflect ease of installation and customer service quality, not legal protection. A 5-star overlay app will not stop a demand letter, and a court will not accept “I installed a well-rated Shopify app” as evidence of compliance.

The fact that an overlay is available in the Shopify App Store does not mean Shopify endorses it as a compliance solution. Shopify does not vet apps for ADA or EAA compliance.

Why overlays fail technically

Overlays operate by injecting JavaScript that modifies the DOM at runtime. This approach has built-in limits:

They can’t fix what they can’t reach. Server-rendered Liquid templates, content inside iframes, third-party app widgets (reviews, chat, payment forms): overlays cannot modify these elements. On a Shopify store, a significant amount of markup comes from Liquid templates that render server-side before the overlay’s JavaScript even loads.

They conflict with assistive technology. Screen reader users already have their own tools configured the way they prefer. An overlay that overrides browser defaults or injects unexpected ARIA attributes can make the experience worse, not better.

They don’t persist. If the overlay script fails to load (slow network, ad blocker, CDN outage), every “fix” disappears. The underlying Liquid templates and CSS are as broken as they were before.

They can’t generate meaningful alt text. An overlay might detect that a product image is missing alt text, but it cannot understand what the product looks like. The generic alt text it produces (“image” or “photo”) fails the WCAG requirement for meaningful alternatives. Your Shopify product images need descriptions a person would write: “walnut leather sneaker, side view”.

They add performance overhead. Overlays load additional JavaScript on every page. For Shopify stores already dealing with app-injected scripts, an overlay compounds the performance hit, which can hurt your Core Web Vitals and search rankings.

What works instead

The alternative to an overlay is straightforward: fix the code, in the order the checklist gives.

<script src="overlay.js"></script>
<!-- injects ARIA at runtime,
     on top of your Liquid -->

<button aria-label="Add Walnut
  Sneaker to cart">
  {% render 'cart-icon' %}
</button>

• If a product image is missing alt text, add a description in your Shopify admin’s product image editor or directly in the Liquid template
• If a button has no label, add an aria-label attribute in the theme code
• If color contrast fails, adjust the CSS values in your theme’s stylesheet or theme settings
• If a form field is unlabeled, add a properly associated label element in the Liquid template
• If a modal traps keyboard focus, fix the focus management in the theme’s JavaScript

These are changes to your actual Shopify theme files. They persist regardless of whether JavaScript loads. They work with every screen reader. They satisfy both the letter and spirit of accessibility law, the ADA and the EAA alike.

SiteRemora automates this process. We scan your Shopify store for violations, locate the exact lines of Liquid, HTML, and CSS responsible, and generate targeted fixes that you can review and apply. The changes are made in your theme files.

In short

Overlays were a reasonable-sounding idea that failed in practice. The FTC, the courts, and the data all point in the same direction: overlays do not make your site accessible, they do not protect you from lawsuits, and they may make things worse.

If you want compliance for your Shopify store, fix the code. If you want it done continuously and automatically, that’s what SiteRemora is for. If you are weighing a specific widget against a code-level fix, we keep plain side-by-sides for accessiBe and UserWay.