For years, I’ve written on my personal site about overlays – also known as accessibility widgets. Over 900 other accessibility experts, advocates, and disability rights lawyers all over the world have signed an open statement against these products: https://overlayfactsheet.com/ (Disclaimer: I’m the primary author of that document). Among the chief complaints against these products is how they’re marketed. The most pervasive of the false claims is that using the accessibility widget will keep a site owner from getting sued. This claim is disproven on an almost daily basis and there’s even a class action lawsuit against one overlay vendor for false claims having to do with purported protections against lawsuit.
Nevertheless, another overlay vendor today issued a press release regarding a new offering which they claim “Customers who implement [Redacted]’s recommendations and full suite of solutions gain up to 300% greater protection than with traditional accessibility consulting and 400% more than automation-only competitors”. No data is offered to back up these claims and I would argue that no such data exists – not (just) because these numbers are made up but also because it is impossible to gather such data.
Fundamental to these claims seems to be the notion that this service takes into consideration a number of (as yet undisclosed) factors and generates recommendations on things that the company should improve. Assuming these factors are logical and the recommendations are sound, this all makes sense. Where this falls apart is in the claims that this offering is 300% (or 400%) more effective than the two options they present (“traditional accessibility consulting” and “automation-only competitors”, neither of which are defined). To be able to make such a claim that their solution is better, they would need to have hard data regarding the total number of companies who used those approaches, used those approaches correctly, and got sued anyway. This requires gathering proprietary data from a statistically significant sample size of companies who a) have used those other approaches and been sued, b) have used those other approaches and not been sued, c) have not used other approaches and been sued, and d) have not used other approaches and not been sued. Furthermore, it also requires them to have enough customers using their service for long enough to truly demonstrate the accuracy of their claim. The whole notion that any of this is backed by real data is absurd.
The 100% guaranteed way to avoid a website accessibility lawsuit
Made-up numbers aside, there is a smidgeon of truth in their claim. They say, basically, this: “Customers who heed our advice are better protected from lawsuits”. Well, I should hope so! And what might that advice be? Fix your website’s accessibility problems. Because there’s only one truly guaranteed way to avoid a website accessibility lawsuit: Make sure your website is accessible.
The challenge that website owners have isn’t a lack of advice. In fact, you can get a ton of advice for free from a well-structured prompt on ChatGPT. What website owners need is someone to actually fix their website. This is not something that can be automated. There are no special AI tools or widgets that can truly repair all of your site’s issues. And, while there are certainly tools that can make the job quicker or more efficient, they still need to be operated by experts. At AFixt, we are those experts.
