Otra crítica a los "accessibility overlay"

En Accessibility Overlays May Not Make Your Site More Accessible se presenta otra crítica a los "accessibility overlays", las capas de accesibilidad que prometen resolver los problemas de accesibilidad de un sitio web con unas pocas líneas de código:

Overlays are software products that can be easily added to existing websites. They detect and attempt to correct accessibility issues by “overlaying” additional code on the webpage. Companies market their products as easy-to-implement accessibility solutions that achieve compliance, in some cases even promising protection from litigation.

En Estados Unidos, parece que esta solución no protege de ser demandado:

But accessibility advocates say overlays are not acceptable substitutes for developing accessible websites. In March, a petition called the Overlay Fact Sheet began circulating, which called on websites to stop relying on overlays as quick fixes for accessibility issues.

And overlays don’t necessarily prevent lawsuits, either. In 2020, over 250 lawsuits were filed against companies that used overlays.

Y pueden producir sus propios problemas:

Sometimes overlay tools can create accessibility problems of their own. Beijers said an earlier overlay issue that has since been fixed was an aggressive start-up process that interfered with screen readers being able to read the contents of webpages.

Many users have their own trusted accessibility tools to help them navigate the web. But these tools can only work optimally when used on websites that are good at accommodating them. Developing accessible websites means creating pages flexible enough to work well with accessibility tools. Flexibility is important because different users have different needs — some low-vision users require large text size, while others have narrow fields of vision and prefer small text size within a narrow frame.

“There are end user tools, but the webpages still need to support those tools, and they need to be adaptable,” Smith said. “The page needs to support that adaptation without it totally falling apart and breaking.”

The problem with overlays is that, instead of making websites flexible enough to accommodate accessibility tools, they often make pages more rigid, less adaptable and sometimes even override user preferences.

“What these tools do is make your page more flexible in these very specific ways,” Smith said. “And it’s kind of forcing the user into this specific pattern or experience that may not actually be best for that user, because you’re removing that end-user control.”

Some users have found overlays so disruptive to their own accessibility tools that they rig their browsers to block them. Accessibyebye is an extension for the Chrome browser that will block select overlay products from working.