Frequently Asked Questions

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are standards for digital accessibility for assistive technology that date back to the first years of the world wide web, and are closely aligned with Sir Tim Berners-Lee himself. WCAG guidelines ensure that the world's information as presented on the internet is available to everyone, regardless of physical and cognitive ability.

Most WCAG guidelines address visual accessibility so that text is legible, content can allow content to be read aloud by screenreaders, and actions are available via keyboard instead of mouse alone. If you are among the users of a certain age with a fondness for Flash websites from the early '00s, temper your nostalgia with the knowledge that those websites were both inaccessible and non-performant, and Steve Jobs was right to make Flash incompatible with iPhones to hasten Flash's death spiral.

Largely, yes, WordPress meets or exceeds WCAG 2.2 and EN 301 549 standards for digital accessibility. The WordPress back end also includes tools to encourage use of basic HTML elements, image alt text, and other native accessibility tools. 

However, as with any online framework, working accessibility knowledge and is necessary to: 

• ensure semantic headers are properly ordered 
• ensure keyboard navigability
• adequately label form elements and error states 
• ensure video content includes closed captions and text or audio descriptions as appropriate 
  

Overlays promise "quick fix" digital accessibility that they simply cannot deliver. 

From the Overlay Fact Sheet: 

Given that conformance is defined as meeting all requirements of the standard, these products' documented inability to repair all possible issues means that they cannot bring a website into compliance.

Please see FTC Orders accessiBe to Pay $1 Million for Deceptive Claims 

Please see the Usable.net ADA Accessibility Lawsuit Tracker which includes lawsuits against companies that had installed a third-party accessibility widget. 

Please see Widget Usage Fails to Prevent Lawsuits from EcomBack's 2025 mid-year report.

Despite their widespread marketing as a “quick fix” for compliance, accessibility widgets continue to face legal scrutiny … The chart shows that lawsuits targeting websites using accessibility overlays or widgets have increased consistently each month compared to the same period in 2024. 

Flatly: digital accessibility overlays are a scam. The website owners that purchased these overlays were scammed. The success of the scam is not an indicator otherwise.