| Statement From the European Commission Regarding Accessibility Overlays
Web accessibility overlays are tools or technologies that aim to improve
the accessibility of a website. Most such tools attempt to do this by
using JavaScript to modify the website's front-end code. A subcategory
of these tools claim they can make a site accessibility compliant,
sometimes by using artificial intelligence.
In the European Union, compliance is based on conformance to the
harmonised standard EN 301 549, which references requirements from WCAG
2.1 (level AA) and supplements these with a number of additional
requirements. Automatic detection of failures against WCAG 2.1
is possible for at most 30% of this standard's success criteria.
Automatically repairing accessibility issues requires that those issues
can be found automatically. Claims that a website can be made fully
compliant without manual intervention are not realistic, since no
automated tool can cover all the WCAG 2.1 level A and AA criteria. It is
even less realistic to expect to detect automatically the additional EN
301549 criteria. Moreover, automatic repair is more challenging than the
automatic detection of accessibility failures.
In addition, some overlay tools have been reported to interfere with the
assistive technologies used by people with disabilities. In other words,
overlay tools may make a website less accessible for some users.
Tools claiming to make a site fully compliant can be distinguished from
a different category of tools, namely widgets built into webpages that
allow users to adapt certain aspects of a site to their own needs or
preferences. These include the ATbar and UI Options These tools do not
claim to solve any accessibility issues on a site but assume (and
possibly require) a basic level of accessibility.
Neither of the above categories of tools can substitute for the manual
work of making a site accessible. DG COMM cannot endorse any tools or
products that fall into the categories of overlay tools or widgets.
https://commission.europa.eu/resources-partners/europa-web-guide/design-content-and-development/accessibility/testing-early-and-regularly/accessibility-overlays_en
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