Why an accessibility overlay widget will not make your government site compliant

Overlay products inject a toolbar that lets visitors change contrast or font size and attempt to patch issues at runtime. They are heavily marketed to public entities because the pitch is irresistible: install a snippet, be compliant.

Three problems. First, the DOJ rule requires the content itself to conform to WCAG 2.1 AA; an overlay does not change the content. Second, more than 800 accessibility practitioners and advocates have signed the Overlay Fact Sheet asking organizations not to use them, and screen reader users routinely report overlays make sites harder to use. Third, sites running overlays continue to be sued; in 2023 the FTC fined one vendor over compliance claims.

What works instead is unglamorous: find the actual issues, fix them in your CMS, and keep monitoring. PillarScan is deliberately not an overlay. It changes nothing on your site; it tells you what to change.