Free Shopify Accessibility Overlay Checker
Find out whether a Shopify store runs an accessibility overlay widget, such as accessiBe, UserWay, AudioEye, EqualWeb or Accessibly, and what that does and does not do for the store. No install, no sign-up and no email address.
An overlay is a script that adds a floating accessibility button and tries to patch pages in each visitor's browser as they load. It is the most heavily marketed kind of accessibility product, and the most criticised by the disabled shoppers it is sold to help. Knowing whether a store relies on one is the first step to knowing where its accessibility work actually stands.
Works with any public Shopify store. It reads the home page only and changes nothing.
What an overlay does, and what it does not
| Typical overlay widget | Fixing the store itself | |
|---|---|---|
| When changes happen | In each visitor's browser, every time a page loads | Once, in your theme and product data |
| How a fix is chosen | Guessed at page load from class names and nearby text | Decided per element, then tested |
| Image descriptions | Injected at runtime; gone if the script is removed | Saved in your products; they stay |
| If you uninstall | Every "fix" disappears | The store stays fixed |
| Screen reader users | Many report it conflicts with the screen reader they already use | Their own software reads a page that works |
Overlays can help some visitors with display preferences, like larger text. What they cannot do is repair the code a screen reader or keyboard actually uses, and nobody checks whether their runtime patches worked.
What regulators have said
In 2025 the US Federal Trade Commission fined the overlay vendor accessiBe $1 million. The action was about marketing claims: telling businesses that the product made their websites compliant with accessibility standards when it did not. A merchant who repeats that kind of claim about their own store is making the same claim. Hundreds of accessibility professionals have also signed the Overlay Fact Sheet, which explains the problems in detail.
If your store has one
You do not have to remove it today. Do not rely on it, and do not repeat a vendor's compliance claim. Find and fix the underlying problems in your theme and products, starting with the most common: colour contrast, missing image descriptions and unlabelled buttons. Once those are fixed in the store, decide whether the widget still earns its place.
Start with the free accessibility checker, the color contrast checker and the alt text checker.
Fix it in the store, not in the browser
Remedy is our Shopify app, and it is not an overlay: it puts no widget on your storefront. It scans your store in a real browser with axe-core, writes image descriptions into your product data, corrects contrast, target sizes and focus rings through its app block, tests each fix on your store and discards any that fail, and keeps a dated record of what was found, fixed and still open. It never claims to make a store compliant. The Audit plan is free.
See Remedy on the Shopify App StoreMore free tools: all our free Shopify store checkers.
Questions
- Which overlays does it detect?
- accessiBe, UserWay, AudioEye, EqualWeb, Accessibly, All in One Accessibility, Equally AI, Recite Me, ReachDeck, MaxAccess, TruAbilities, Adally and several other widget apps installed from the Shopify App Store. It looks for their loading scripts on the home page.
- It says no overlay, but I have an accessibility app. Why?
- Apps that fix your theme or product data, rather than adding a widget, are not overlays and are not reported. A widget added by a script that only loads after the page has finished may also be missed.
- Does an overlay make my store compliant with the ADA or the EAA?
- No tool can make that claim honestly, and the FTC fined a vendor $1 million for making it. Accessibility depends on how your store works for a person, which needs fixes in the store and human testing.
- Does the European Accessibility Act apply to my store?
- The free EAA readiness check helps you find out in three questions, and checks your store for the gaps visible from outside.