accessiBe Review 2026: Honest Assessment After the $1M FTC Fine

1. What Is accessiBe?

accessiBe is an Israel-based company (founded 2018) that sells an AI-powered accessibility overlay widget called accessWidget. The product is a JavaScript snippet you add to your website that creates a floating toolbar allowing users to adjust visual settings like font size, contrast, and cursor size.

The company has marketed accessWidget as a solution that can make "any website" compliant with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) — the technical standard used to measure web accessibility. This claim was central to their marketing until the FTC intervened in January 2025.

accessiBe has raised over $58 million in venture capital and claims to serve 180,000+ websites. The company operates in the "accessibility overlay" market alongside competitors like UserWay, AudioEye, and EqualWeb — all of which use a similar overlay approach.

2. How accessWidget Actually Works

Understanding what accessWidget does — and doesn't do — is essential to evaluating whether it's right for your business. Here's a technical breakdown of the overlay approach.

What the Overlay Does

When a visitor loads your website, accessWidget's JavaScript runs and adds a floating accessibility icon (typically in the bottom corner). Clicking it opens a panel with adjustment options:

• →Visual adjustments: Font scaling, line height, letter spacing, color contrast, saturation, cursor size
• →Content adjustments: Highlight links, highlight headings, readable font toggle
• →Orientation aids: Reading guide, stop animations, hide images
• →"Screen reader mode": Claims to add ARIA labels and roles to elements dynamically

The Critical Limitation: Frontend vs Source Code

Here's where the fundamental problem lies. accessWidget operates on the rendered frontend of your website — it manipulates what the browser displays after the page loads. It does not modify your actual source code, HTML structure, server-side logic, or database content.

This distinction matters enormously because:

3. The $1M FTC Fine: What Happened

The FTC's complaint against accessiBe centered on two core allegations:

Allegation 1: False WCAG Compliance Claims

accessiBe represented that its AI product could "make any website compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines." The FTC found these claims were "false, misleading, or unsubstantiated" and violated the FTC Act.

As FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Samuel Levine stated: "Companies looking for help making their websites WCAG compliant must be able to trust that products do what they are advertised to do. Overstating a product's AI or other capabilities without adequate evidence is deceptive."

Allegation 2: Fake Independent Reviews

The FTC also found that accessiBe paid for articles formatted to look like impartial, independent reviews on third-party websites. These "reviews" appeared to be objective assessments but were actually sponsored content with undisclosed material connections to accessiBe.

What the Order Requires

Under the final order (approved 5-0 by the full Commission), accessiBe is now:

• 1.Barred from claiming its automated products can make any website WCAG-compliant — unless it has evidence to support such claims
• 2.Prohibited from misrepresenting that third-party reviews are independent when they have a material connection to accessiBe
• 3.Required to disclose any material connections between endorsers and the company
• 4.Required to pay $1 million (which may be used for consumer refunds)

Each future violation of this order carries a civil penalty of up to $51,744 per instance.

4. What Overlays Can't Fix (Technical Analysis)

WCAG 2.1 AA contains 50 success criteria across four principles (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust). We evaluated which criteria an overlay can theoretically address versus which require source code changes.

5. The Lawsuit Data: Overlays Don't Protect You

One of the primary reasons businesses purchase accessiBe is lawsuit protection. The data tells a very different story.

Why Overlays Attract Lawsuits

Counterintuitively, having an overlay installed can increase your lawsuit risk:

• 1.Evidence of awareness: Installing an overlay demonstrates you were aware your site had accessibility issues. Courts have used this as evidence that you chose an inadequate solution rather than properly remediating.
• 2.Easy to detect: Plaintiff law firms use automated tools to scan for overlay JavaScript. The presence of an overlay script essentially flags your site as a target — the firm knows the site has issues AND that the "fix" doesn't work.
• 3.No good-faith defense: Courts have not accepted overlay installation as a good-faith effort toward compliance. Unlike hiring an auditor or engaging in active remediation, buying an overlay is seen as a shortcut.

6. Screen Reader User Reports

The people best positioned to evaluate accessiBe are the disabled users it claims to help. Their feedback has been consistently negative.

The Overlay Fact Sheet

Over 700 accessibility professionals have signed the Overlay Fact Sheet — a joint statement opposing overlay products. Signatories include experts from Google, Microsoft, Apple, Shopify, BBC, eBay, Target, and CVS Health. The statement declares that overlays "do not repair the underlying problems with inaccessible websites."

Common Screen Reader Complaints

The National Federation of the Blind

The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) — the largest organization of blind people in the United States — has formally opposed accessibility overlays. This is the single most important voice on blind user experience, and they unequivocally reject the overlay approach.

Specific Technical Issues Reported

• •Overlay adds conflicting ARIA labels that override correct existing attributes
• •Focus management disrupted — keyboard users lose their place on the page
• •Auto-generated alt text is often inaccurate or nonsensical
• •Form labels get incorrectly associated, causing confusion during data entry
• •Page navigation structure (headings, landmarks) incorrectly modified
• •Overlay JavaScript conflicts with assistive technology browser extensions

7. Pricing: What You're Actually Paying For

accessiBe's pricing is structured around monthly website traffic. Here's a breakdown of what each tier includes and how it compares to code-based alternatives.

8. Who Might Still Benefit from accessiBe

In fairness, there are very narrow scenarios where accessiBe's overlay could provide some value — though we'd still recommend code-based solutions as the primary approach.

9. The Code-Based Alternative

Code-based accessibility scanners take a fundamentally different approach than overlays. Instead of adding a JavaScript layer on top of your site, they analyze your actual HTML, CSS, and ARIA implementation to identify WCAG violations — then tell you exactly what to fix and where.

How Code-Based Scanning Works

10. accessiBe vs Code-Based Scanners

Note: No automated tool can catch 100% of WCAG violations. Approximately 57% of criteria can be tested automatically; the rest require manual review. Code-based scanners honestly acknowledge this limitation — they catch what's automatable and guide you on the rest.

11. How to Switch from accessiBe

If you're currently using accessiBe and want to switch to a code-based approach, here's a step-by-step migration plan.

12. Frequently Asked Questions