In April 2025, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took enforcement action against accessiBe Inc. and accessiBe Ltd., ordering the companies to pay one million dollars for deceptive claims that their accessibility widget could make any website fully compliant with accessibility standards. The FTC complaint (File No. 2223156) describes how accessiBe’s accessWidget failed to correct essential […]
The Illinois Department of Innovation & Technology (DoIT) recently issued guidance advising state agencies against the use of accessibility overlays and widgets on their websites. These tools, often marketed as quick fixes to make sites compliant, have been widely criticized by people with disabilities and accessibility experts for creating more barriers than they remove. DoIT’s […]
In April 2025, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced an enforcement action against the accessibility software company accessiBe, ordering it to pay one million dollars for making false and misleading claims about its automated accessibility tool, accessWidget. The ruling marks a turning point in the ongoing debate over the use of automated overlays and widgets […]
More than three decades after the Americans with Disabilities Act became law, digital inclusion is still far from achieved. The newly released 2025 WebAIM Million Report found that only 5.2 percent of the top one million websites meet basic accessibility standards. The remaining 94.8 percent fail to comply with WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the recognized […]