TL;DR: Accessibility overlays (those little wheelchair icons) do not make your website compliant. They mask the problem rather than fixing it, interfere with the tools blind people actually use, and act as a 'Sue Me' beacon for predatory lawyers. You cannot automate compliance; you have to fix the code.

As a business owner in Houston, you have likely seen the ads. They pop up in your feed or arrive in your inbox, promising a miracle:

"Make your website 100% ADA Compliant in 48 hours with one line of code! Only $49/month."

For a business owner worried about the rising tide of digital accessibility lawsuits, this sounds like the perfect solution. It’s cheap, it’s fast, and it uses "Artificial Intelligence."

It is also snake oil.

These products are called Overlays. If you are relying on one to protect your business from a lawsuit, you are walking on thin ice. Here is why we refuse to sell them—and why you should refuse to buy them.

What is an "Overlay"?

An overlay is a third-party product—usually a snippet of JavaScript code—that you paste into your website’s header.

Once installed, it typically generates a "floating action button" (usually a wheelchair icon) in the corner of your screen. When a user clicks it, a menu opens allowing them to adjust font sizes, change contrast modes, or have text read aloud.

The sales pitch is that this "AI" layer sits on top of your website, scans for errors, and fixes them on the fly without you ever having to touch your website's source code.

If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.

Reason 1: The "Band-Aid" Problem (It Doesn't Fix the Code)

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1 AA)—the legal standard for compliance—require Semantic HTML.

This means the code underneath your website must describe what is happening on the screen.

A button must be coded as a <button>.
An image must have alt text describing it.
Forms must have labels associated with their inputs.

The Overlay Reality:

Overlays do not touch your source code. They attempt to "guess" what elements are.

For example, if your developer built a button using a generic <div> tag (which is invisible to keyboard navigation), the overlay tries to force the browser to treat it like a button.

This is a digital Band-Aid. The moment the overlay fails to load, or the "AI" guesses wrong, or the user has JavaScript disabled, your site is broken again.

From a legal standpoint, if your underlying code is not accessible, your site is not accessible. Putting a sticker on a broken engine doesn't fix the car.

Reason 2: It Ruins the Experience for Blind Users

This is the part overlay companies don't tell you.

Blind users and people with low vision already have assistive technology. They use sophisticated screen readers (like JAWS, NVDA, or VoiceOver) that they have customized to their specific speed and preferences.

Overlays interfere with these tools.

When a blind user lands on a site with an overlay:

It causes conflict: The overlay often announces itself aggressively, interrupting the user's screen reader.
It breaks navigation: It overrides the user's preferred keyboard shortcuts.
It degrades quality: It forces a "clunky" synthetic voice over the high-quality voice the user is used to.

The Data:

In a 2021 survey by WebAIM, nearly 70% of screen reader users rated overlays as "not helpful" or widely considered them to be difficult to use.

By installing an overlay, you aren't helping disabled users; you are actively annoying them.

Reason 3: It Paints a Target on Your Back

This is the most critical factor for your risk mitigation strategy.

You might think an overlay shows you are "trying." To a predatory law firm, an overlay signals something else entirely: "Here is a business that knows they have an accessibility problem but tried to buy a cheap shortcut."

Lawyers now use automated scripts to scan the web specifically looking for the code signatures of popular overlay widgets.

The Legal Reality:

There are hundreds of lawsuits on record filed against companies using overlays.
Courts have repeatedly denied motions to dismiss cases based on the presence of an overlay.
In some cases, the overlay itself contained accessibility errors that were cited in the lawsuit.

If you get sued, and your defense is "I bought this $49 tool," you will lose. The tool didn't fix the code, and the plaintiff can easily prove the site is still non-compliant.

The Trust Calculation: Why We Don't Sell Overlays

At our agency, we operate on a "Risk Mitigation" model. Our job is to act as your shield.

If we sold you an overlay, we would be taking your money for a product we know doesn't work. When you eventually receive a demand letter, you would ask us, "I thought you said I was compliant?"

We would have no answer.

The Difference in Approach

Summary

You cannot automate empathy, and you cannot automate legal compliance with a single line of JavaScript.

If your goal is to actually protect your business and serve your customers, there is no substitute for manual remediation. We audit the site, we find the broken code, and we fix it permanently.

Don't pay for a Band-Aid. Fix the wound.

Do you have an overlay on your site right now?

Contact us for a free consultation - We will help you remove it and show you a roadmap to real compliance that actually holds up in court.

The Truth About $49 'AI Accessibility' Overlays (And Why They Won't Save You From a Lawsuit)