What counts as an accessibility overlay?

A third-party script you add to your site that layers an accessibility toolbar, and usually a set of automatic DOM adjustments, over the page you already ship. The toolbar gives visitors controls for contrast, text size and spacing; the automatic half tries to add missing labels, roles and alt text as the page loads. What it does not do is change your source. Remove the script and the page is exactly what it was before — which is the property that decides everything else on this page.

How does this checker work?

It fetches the one URL you enter, reads the HTML your server returns, and looks inside the script and iframe tags for the loader each vendor publishes — acsbapp.com for accessiBe, cdn.userway.org for UserWay, audioeye.com for AudioEye, and so on for the rest of the table below. It matches on the loader host, never on the word accessibility appearing in a class name, because a false positive here would tell you your money is buying something it is not.

It says no overlay, but I am paying for one. What happened?

Almost always a tag manager. If the widget is injected by Google Tag Manager or a similar container after the document loads, it is not in the HTML your server sent and this checker cannot see it — it reads the served markup, not the rendered page. Check your container. The other possibility is that the loader is on some pages and not the one you entered, which is worth knowing on its own: an overlay installed on the homepage template and missing from checkout is a common misconfiguration.

It found an overlay. Does that mean my site is not compliant?

It means nothing either way, and that is the honest answer. Detecting the script says a widget is present, not whether the page beneath it passes. A site with an overlay can conform because the underlying code was built well; a site without one can conform for the same reason. What the detection does tell you is which claims you are relying on, and whose. The conformance question is a measurement, and it is the one the scan on this page runs.

Do overlays actually create legal exposure?

The specific thing to know is that in January 2025 the Federal Trade Commission acted against accessiBe over claims that its AI widget made websites WCAG and ADA compliant, and over reviews it funded without disclosing them; the matter settled at $1,000,000. Separately, the Overlay Fact Sheet — a public statement signed by several hundred accessibility practitioners and developers, including people who have worked for overlay vendors — records that no overlay product available today makes a non-conforming site conform. Neither of those is a court holding about your site. Both are reasons not to let the vendor's marketing be your written conformance position.

Should I remove the widget?

Not as a first move, and not on our say-so. A toolbar that lets a visitor raise contrast or spacing is a genuine convenience for some people, and ripping it out changes nothing about your underlying code. The sequence that works is the other order: find out what the page fails on its own, fix those in source, and then decide whether the widget is still earning its subscription. A site that conforms without it has an easy decision; a site that does not was never protected by it.

What can an overlay never fix?

Anything that is not in the HTML it can reach, and anything a machine cannot author. Captions and audio description for your video. The accessibility of a PDF you link to. Colour contrast in the CSS you ship, as opposed to a high-contrast mode a visitor has to find and switch on. Keyboard traps inside a third-party booking or payment iframe, which is someone else's DOM. And alt text with meaning rather than description — a generated caption says what is in the image, not what the image is doing on the page, and those are different sentences for a product photo, a chart and a decorative rule.

Does this store my domain?

No. The check is a single HTTP GET of the page you name, run in the request and discarded when it answers. There is no account, no email field and no row written anywhere. If you go on to run the free scan, that one does keep a report so you can come back to it, which is the whole point of a report.

Is an accessibility overlay running on your site?

Enter your domain. We read the HTML your server sends and look inside the script tags for the loader each widget vendor publishes — accessiBe, UserWay, AudioEye, EqualWeb and 10 more. You get the vendor name, the string we matched so you can check it yourself, and the list of WCAG failures that sit underneath any overlay regardless of which one you are paying for.

Free, instant, no signup and no card. Nothing is stored.

Free, instant, no signup and no card. We read the HTML your server sends for that one page and look for the loader script each overlay vendor ships. Nothing is stored.

The widget is a layer. The audit reads the floor.

An overlay is JavaScript that runs after your document is delivered and edits the DOM in the browser. That single fact decides most of the argument about them. It means the toolbar is real — a visitor who opens it genuinely gets larger text and higher contrast — and it also means the page you ship is unchanged. An automated tester, a human tester with a screen reader, a procurement officer reading your conformance report and a plaintiff's expert are all looking at the source. The widget is not in their line of sight.

It also means the overlay is racing your visitor. Assistive technology that reaches the page before the loader finishes, a slow connection, a content security policy that blocks the third-party script, a JavaScript error earlier in the page — each of these leaves the original markup exposed, and the original markup is the thing being measured. Nothing about this is a claim that overlays are useless. It is a claim about what they are evidence of, which is nothing.

What changed in January 2025

The Federal Trade Commission brought an action against accessiBe over its marketing: the claim that an AI-powered widget made a website WCAG and ADA compliant, and separately the practice of funding reviews of the product without disclosing the relationship. It settled at $1,000,000. Read that as a statement about claims rather than about code. The regulator did not rule on whether any particular site conforms — it ruled that selling a script as compliance is a representation you have to be able to back.

The practical consequence lands on the buyer, not the vendor. If your accessibility position is “we installed X”, your position is the vendor's wording. The alternative is unglamorous and it is the only thing that survives being read: a dated report against WCAG 2.1 level AA, criterion by criterion, with the failing element named on each page — and a record of what you fixed.

The 14 vendors this checker knows

Each one is matched on the loader it serves, inside a script or iframe tag, so a page that merely links to a vendor is not reported as running it.

accessiBe
acsbapp.com / acsbap.com
The alternative →
UserWay
cdn.userway.org
The alternative →
AudioEye
audioeye.com
The alternative →
EqualWeb
aacdn.nagich.com / equalweb.com
Recite Me
reciteme.com
Max Access
maxaccess.io
AllAccessible
allaccessible.org
UsableNet Assistive
enable.usablenet.com
FACIL'iti
ws.facil-iti.com
eSSENTIAL Accessibility / Level Access
essentialaccessibility.com
Accessibility Enabler
accessibilityenabler.com
Adally
adally.com
TruAbilities
truabilities.com
AccessiWay
accessiway.com

Missing one? The table is a list of loaders we can match with confidence, not a claim that it is every product on the market.

Common questions

What counts as an accessibility overlay?: A third-party script you add to your site that layers an accessibility toolbar, and usually a set of automatic DOM adjustments, over the page you already ship. The toolbar gives visitors controls for contrast, text size and spacing; the automatic half tries to add missing labels, roles and alt text as the page loads. What it does not do is change your source. Remove the script and the page is exactly what it was before — which is the property that decides everything else on this page.
How does this checker work?: It fetches the one URL you enter, reads the HTML your server returns, and looks inside the script and iframe tags for the loader each vendor publishes — acsbapp.com for accessiBe, cdn.userway.org for UserWay, audioeye.com for AudioEye, and so on for the rest of the table below. It matches on the loader host, never on the word accessibility appearing in a class name, because a false positive here would tell you your money is buying something it is not.
It says no overlay, but I am paying for one. What happened?: Almost always a tag manager. If the widget is injected by Google Tag Manager or a similar container after the document loads, it is not in the HTML your server sent and this checker cannot see it — it reads the served markup, not the rendered page. Check your container. The other possibility is that the loader is on some pages and not the one you entered, which is worth knowing on its own: an overlay installed on the homepage template and missing from checkout is a common misconfiguration.
It found an overlay. Does that mean my site is not compliant?: It means nothing either way, and that is the honest answer. Detecting the script says a widget is present, not whether the page beneath it passes. A site with an overlay can conform because the underlying code was built well; a site without one can conform for the same reason. What the detection does tell you is which claims you are relying on, and whose. The conformance question is a measurement, and it is the one the scan on this page runs.
Do overlays actually create legal exposure?: The specific thing to know is that in January 2025 the Federal Trade Commission acted against accessiBe over claims that its AI widget made websites WCAG and ADA compliant, and over reviews it funded without disclosing them; the matter settled at $1,000,000. Separately, the Overlay Fact Sheet — a public statement signed by several hundred accessibility practitioners and developers, including people who have worked for overlay vendors — records that no overlay product available today makes a non-conforming site conform. Neither of those is a court holding about your site. Both are reasons not to let the vendor's marketing be your written conformance position.
Should I remove the widget?: Not as a first move, and not on our say-so. A toolbar that lets a visitor raise contrast or spacing is a genuine convenience for some people, and ripping it out changes nothing about your underlying code. The sequence that works is the other order: find out what the page fails on its own, fix those in source, and then decide whether the widget is still earning its subscription. A site that conforms without it has an easy decision; a site that does not was never protected by it.
What can an overlay never fix?: Anything that is not in the HTML it can reach, and anything a machine cannot author. Captions and audio description for your video. The accessibility of a PDF you link to. Colour contrast in the CSS you ship, as opposed to a high-contrast mode a visitor has to find and switch on. Keyboard traps inside a third-party booking or payment iframe, which is someone else's DOM. And alt text with meaning rather than description — a generated caption says what is in the image, not what the image is doing on the page, and those are different sentences for a product photo, a chart and a decorative rule.
Does this store my domain?: No. The check is a single HTTP GET of the page you name, run in the request and discarded when it answers. There is no account, no email field and no row written anywhere. If you go on to run the free scan, that one does keep a report so you can come back to it, which is the whole point of a report.

Is an accessibility overlay running on your site?

The widget is a layer. The audit reads the floor.

What changed in January 2025

The 14 vendors this checker knows

Common questions

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