The No-Overlay Pledge
ScanAble does not sell, license, recommend, or build accessibility overlays — the JavaScript widgets that promise to make a website compliant by injecting a layer of fixes at runtime.
We don’t do it because it doesn’t work. The disability community has said so. The courts have said so. And in the long run, it makes sites less accessible, not more.
Why overlays don’t work
They patch over the underlying code; they don’t fix it.
An overlay runs after the page loads and tries to detect and rewrite accessibility issues at runtime. The HTML on your server is still inaccessible. The moment the overlay fails to load — slow connection, blocked script, edge-case page — your site is back to where it started.
They break assistive technology.
Screen reader users have repeatedly reported that overlays inject extra DOM, redirect focus, intercept keyboard input, and announce the wrong content. The widget is designed to look helpful to sighted compliance officers, not to actually help disabled users.
They don’t prevent lawsuits.
ADA Title III lawsuits have continued — and grown — against sites running overlay products. Plaintiffs typically cite the overlay itself as part of the failure to provide accessible alternatives. A widget is not a remediation plan.
The disability community has publicly opposed them.
The National Federation of the Blind passed a 2021 resolution naming a specific overlay vendor and condemning the category. Hundreds of accessibility professionals have signed the “Overlay Fact Sheet” (overlayfactsheet.com) refusing to recommend overlays to clients.
What we do instead
ScanAble produces evidence — not a widget. We scan your site with axe-core (the same engine behind Microsoft Accessibility Insights and Google Lighthouse), document every detected violation with severity ratings and fix instructions, and ship a verified, timestamped, cryptographically signed PDF you can hand to a developer or file in a compliance binder.
- Every violation maps to specific WCAG 2.0 / 2.1 / 2.2 success criteria.
- Fix instructions explain what to change in the source code, not what to layer on top.
- Reports include a public verify URL so any third party can confirm the audit was issued by ScanAble at a specific point in time.
- We tell you, in writing, what automated tools cannot detect — keyboard nav flow, screen reader UX, alt-text quality, focus management. No tool can certify compliance for those without manual review.
An honest disclaimer about this pledge
A clean ScanAble report does not certify that a site is fully WCAG- or ADA-compliant. Automated scans catch approximately 30–40% of WCAG issues. The other 60–70% requires manual testing by a person. Anyone selling you something that promises full compliance from a single tool — overlay or otherwise — is overpromising. We’d rather be honest and useful than dishonest and dramatic.
Ready for an audit that actually documents what’s wrong?
Run a free preview, then download the signed audit report for $49 — or scan your whole site for $149.