Watch the ICT 2020 Overlays Panel, featuring Karl Groves, Tenon.io; Al Hoffman, Deque Systems, Inc.; Anil Lewis, National Federation of the Blind; David O’Neill, The Paciello Group; Cyndi Rowland, WebAIM. Conference & Panel Chair: Chris M. Law, Accessibility Track (Joined by Conference Co-Chair Matt Feldman, The Paciello Group)
Panel introduction from the symposium program:
Wild conformance claims. Testing tool interference tactics. A sub-par band-aid or a reasonable fix? The world of Accessibility Overlays has long been a source of contention in the accessibility testing field. This year, the discussion is heating up… (1) There has been a proliferation in claims of ‘full’ or 100% conformance with accessibility standards; and (2) Overlays are now ‘spoofing’ automated accessibility checkers.
For decades, accessibility testing professionals have been advocating that to get to an accessible website, you need to fix the underlying code. If you want to make change lasting, you need to fix coding practices that lead to inaccessible code, through training and implementation of governance procedures in development. Those who promote and sell accessibility overlay technologies have espoused an alternative approach, whereby you can “use just one line of code” to pull in their tool, effectively absolving the customer of the need to fix their code and their programming practices. In this panel, we will first briefly introduce the concept of overlays, what they do and how they generally work. We will then be discussion questions at the intersection of overlays and accessibility testing.
For more on Overlays: https://overlayfactsheet.com/
Update: November 2021
As part of the 2021 Digital Accessibility Legal Summit, Jeremy Horelick, Jason Taylor and Richard Hunt discuss widgets, plug-ins and overlays being marketed as one-step software solutions to website accessibility. They provide a brief review of terminology and differences between the various products, followed by an examination of whether these tools will do what they promise—in terms of both actual accessibility and protection from website accessibility litigation.
Watch the recording of the Legal Summit presentation on YouTube.
Update: December 6, 2021
Karl Groves and Michael Beck have authored a document for the accessibility community: "Truth in advertising does not exist for overlay vendors". Additional details are posted at overlayfalseclaims.com.