Accessibility Widgets Do Not Deliver Compliance
Overlay widgets, including AudioEye, accessiBe, and UserWay, add a toolbar over a website. They do not fix the code underneath, and courts and federal regulators treat them accordingly. Here is what the record actually says.
Four Things Every Website Owner Should Know
A widget is a subscription, not a shield. Every one of these involved a site that was running an overlay.
A court settlement names AudioEye as insufficient
LightHouse for the Blind v. ADP TotalSource · Filed 2020 · Settled 2021
ADP was a paying AudioEye customer and was sued anyway because blind employees could not use its platform. The settlement states that overlays such as AudioEye and accessiBe “do not suffice to achieve Accessibility” and requires expert human auditing and real code fixes.
Widgets do not stop lawsuits
Murphy v. Eyebobs, LLC · W.D. Pa. 2021
The website ran an overlay. The suit proceeded anyway, and the class settlement required exactly what the widget promised to replace: a real audit, an accessibility consultant, an internal team, and staff training, plus the plaintiff’s attorney fees. Nearly 600 companies running widgets were sued in 2022 alone.
The vendor's compliance letter is not a defense
Quezada v. U.S. Wings · S.D.N.Y. 2021
The site owner held audit statements from its overlay vendor claiming compliance. The court refused to dismiss the case: the burden of proving the site actually works for people with disabilities stays with the site owner, not the vendor’s paperwork.
Federal regulators fined a widget vendor $1,000,000
FTC Final Order Against accessiBe · April 2025
The Federal Trade Commission’s final order requires a $1,000,000 payment and bars the company from claiming its automated product can make any website compliant, or keep it compliant, without proof. Over 1,000 accessibility professionals have signed a public statement that overlays do not work.
The law measures your actual website, not your vendor invoice.
Compliance requires human testing by accessibility specialists and fixes to the underlying code. That is exactly what Perspective Tester’s A3S program provides.