An accessiBe alternative without an overlay

accessiBe's main product, accessWidget, is an overlay: a script that adds a floating accessibility icon and adjusts the page in the visitor's browser. The underlying HTML and CSS are left as they were, so anyone whose assistive technology ignores the widget meets the original problems.

In April 2025 the US Federal Trade Commission finalised an order requiring accessiBe to pay $1 million. The FTC said the company had misrepresented accessWidget's ability to make any website WCAG compliant, and had presented reviews and articles it paid for as if they were independent.

Overlays have not kept sites out of court either. Businesses running them keep turning up in accessibility lawsuits, and some complaints name the widget itself as a barrier.

This loads your page in a real browser and runs the open-source axe-core engine against WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA. Each failing element is listed with the success criterion it breaks and its conformance level, outlined on a screenshot of your page, so a developer knows which template to open.

It will never tell you that you are "100% compliant". Roughly a third of WCAG can be checked by software, and the report marks what still needs a person. After your fixes ship, scan again and compare the two runs to see which issues are actually gone.

An overlay cannot write accurate alt text for your product photos, pick colours for your brand that clear 4.5:1, or know what an unlabelled icon button is for. Those are decisions someone on your side has to make once, in the code, and then they stay made.

To keep them made, the same engine runs as a browser extension, a CLI and GitHub Action, and an MCP server, so a regression shows up in a pull request instead of in a demand letter.