Accessibility widgets
Does an accessibility widget protect you from ADA lawsuits?
No.
In 2025, 1,416 ADA website lawsuits were filed against companies that already had an accessibility widget on their site. That’s more than one in four of the 5,000-plus digital accessibility lawsuits filed that year.
- ADA digital accessibility lawsuits filed in 2025
- 5,000+
- of them against companies that already had a widget
- 1,416
- against companies with under $25 million in revenue
- 64%
Source: UsableNet, 2025 Year-End Digital Accessibility Lawsuit Report, usablenet.com.
Why widgets don’t work
A widget is the little icon that opens a toolbar for bigger text, higher contrast or a reading guide. It changes how the page looks for the person who opens it. It doesn’t change the page’s code, and the code is what blind visitors’ screen readers read.
So the problems a lawsuit points to are still there: a link a screen reader can only call “link”, a sign-up box with no label, a photo with no description, zoom switched off on phones. Plaintiffs’ firms check the code, not the toolbar.
In April 2025 the Federal Trade Commission ordered accessiBe, one of the biggest widget makers, to pay $1 million for claiming its widget made websites compliant. Read the FTC’s announcement.
What actually reduces the risk
- Find the problems in the code. An automated check finds the common ones in about a minute.
- Fix them. On a typical small-business site that’s a day or two of work.
- Keep it fixed, with a dated record. New pages and plugins bring new problems. In 2025, 45% of federal cases were against companies that had been sued before.
You can keep the widget if your visitors like it. Just don’t count on it.
Where does your site stand?
Run the free check on your homepage, or have us fix what it finds: $750 for your homepage and key pages, with a before-and-after report you can keep on file.
Questions
- Does an accessibility widget make my website ADA compliant?
- No. A widget adds a toolbar that changes how the page looks for someone who opens it, but it does not fix the code underneath, which is what screen readers use and what demand letters cite. In 2025, UsableNet counted 1,416 ADA website lawsuits against companies that already had a widget installed.
- Should I remove my accessibility widget?
- You can keep it if your visitors like it. It just is not a substitute for fixing the problems in the code: missing labels, missing image descriptions, faint text, zoom switched off, and so on.
- What actually reduces the risk of an ADA website lawsuit?
- Fixing the problems in the code, checking again when the site changes, and keeping a dated record that you did. That is what ClearShield checks for, fixes and documents.
This page is general information, not legal advice. Automated checks find many common problems, not all of them.