Accessibility Overlays: What Site Owners Need to Know
Accessibility overlays have received a lot of bad press, much of it deserved. So, what can you do to improve web accessibility?
An accessibility overlay is a software tool designed to remove access barriers from a website. Typically, accessibility overlays are JavaScript plugins that run in your web browser. Many overlays change (or give users the ability to change) the way content appears: font size, color contrast, text-only mode, etc. These changes can make web-based content more readable for users with visual impairments, developmental disabilities, reading disabilities, and more. But overlay developers didn't stop at presenting content. More recently, products have arrived that promise to automate accessible design at the source code level. These self-healing tools analyze the page's code and identify accessibility barriers, then attempt to remove them automatically. The term "accessibility overlay" can refer to a content editing plugin or an automatic repair tool, depending on the context. In both cases, web users with disabilities report unexpected flaws in some of these technologies.
