If your accessibility strategy is "we added the widget," here's a stat worth sitting with: 22.64% of 2025 ADA website lawsuits — 456 cases — targeted sites that already had an accessibility overlay installed. Paying for the tool didn't stop the demand letter.
This post digs into why: what overlays actually do at the code level (patch the rendered DOM after the page loads), why that timing means screen readers and plaintiffs' scans often never see the patch, and the FTC's April 2025 order that put a $1M fine and a 20-year restriction on one overlay vendor's compliance claims.
There's a code comparison showing the real difference between a div an overlay tries to patch into a fake button, and an actual <button> element that's accessible by default — plus what we've found actually moves the needle on legal exposure: fixing violations in your source HTML, prioritized by which ones show up most often in real lawsuits.
Full post (cross-posted from the AccessGuard blog) → https://getaccessguard.com/posts/accessibility-overlays-lawsuit-risk
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