This is placeholder editorial while the blog design is reviewed. The words are real sentences rather than lorem ipsum so the measure, rhythm and heading hierarchy can be judged properly, but nothing here has been through editing and none of it should be treated as published.
Most accessibility trouble does not arrive as a lawsuit. It arrives as a letter, and the letter is shorter and more specific than people expect. It names a handful of failures, usually on pages anyone can reach without logging in, and it asks what you intend to do about them.
The letter is a question about evidence
The instinct is to answer with a claim: we are compliant, we use a tool, we have a badge. That is the weakest available answer, because every part of it can be checked in a few minutes by the person who sent the letter.
The stronger answer is duller. It is a dated record: here is what a scan found, here is what we approved, here is the re-check that confirmed it on the live page. It does not claim the site is perfect. It shows that the work is real and ongoing, which is a different thing and a much easier thing to defend.
A site that is partially conformant with a real, dated record is more defensible than a site wearing a compliance badge over broken markup.
Why a widget is not the answer
An overlay sits on top of the page and rearranges what a visitor sees. The HTML underneath does not change, which means the failures a scanner finds are still there when the next scanner looks. The FTC fined the overlay vendor accessiBe one million dollars in January 2025, and overlay customers have been sued while the overlay was running.
What actually moves
Fixes that change the markup itself — an accessible name on a button, a label bound to a field, a description on an image, contrast that meets the ratio — survive the next scan because they are not a costume.
Those fixes are also boring and safe. Restricting them to attributes and CSS means a layout cannot be restructured by accident, which is the constraint that makes automatic application defensible in the first place.
What software cannot do
Roughly a third of WCAG is human judgement. Whether alt text is accurate, whether the focus order matches the visual order, whether an error message genuinely helps someone recover — no scanner settles those, and a product that folds them into a single score is flattering you rather than informing you.
- A score is not a compliance claim, and no vendor can issue one.
- Automated testing reaches the machine-detectable part, and says so.
- The rest belongs on a checklist a person works through.
Where to start
Run a scan and read the list before buying anything, including from us. Most owners have never seen their own failures written in plain English, and the list usually changes what they think the problem is.
Placeholder post — replace before launch.