← Blog

You installed accessiBe and still got sued. What actually works.

August 25, 2026·By Jonah Sanville

You installed an overlay. You still got sued.

You did the right things. You read about ADA compliance. You installed accessiBe, or UserWay, or a similar widget. A banner sits on your site today. You thought you were safe.

Then the FTC fined accessiBe $1 million in April 2025 for deceptive claims. Then the lawsuit landed in your inbox.

You have plenty of company. More than 800 businesses with accessiBe installed were sued anyway.¹ The widget failed every one of them.

This post answers the question on your mind: does accessiBe protect from lawsuits? Short answer: no. Here is what works.

Does accessiBe protect you from ADA lawsuits?

No. accessiBe is an overlay widget, JavaScript that sits on top of your site and changes what appears on screen. The underlying HTML stays untouched, so the barriers a screen reader hits are still there in the code. In April 2025 the Federal Trade Commission ordered accessiBe to pay $1 million and called its “install us and you are protected” marketing deceptive. Courts have declined to treat an overlay as proof of ADA compliance, and plaintiffs have won against businesses that had one installed. What actually reduces your legal exposure is code-level remediation, alt text, labeled form fields, keyboard navigation, color contrast, and correct heading structure, fixed in your site files, with an evidence trail you can show. That is what this page explains, and you can check your own site free at systivate.com.

The FTC just called the widget a lie

In April 2025, the Federal Trade Commission approved a final order requiring accessiBe to pay $1 million². The FTC found that accessiBe deceived customers. The agency said accessiBe claimed its overlay ensures ADA compliance and blocks lawsuits. The FTC said those claims were false.

The widget market sells one promise: install us and avoid a lawsuit. Federal regulators just called that promise a deception.

A Boston designer did everything right and still got sued three times

Sara Campbell runs saracampbell.com, a fashion brand with 22 stores. She hired the Perkins School for the Blind. She hired an ADA coder. She spent about $200,000 across three lawsuits anyway.

Boston 25 News reporter Kerry Kavanaugh covered her story in a 25 Investigates report.³

“We were very naive about ADA compliance when we started this and ADA compliance grew as e-commerce grew,” Campbell told Boston 25.

Campbell described the moment the suit arrives. “The lawyer gets involved. The lawyer threatens us. It is out of a different state. We are scared to death.”

Her site passed audits. The plaintiff still found violations inside the code. “We were compliant. They found something inside the code,” she said.

The Boston 25 investigation counted 15,332 ADA website lawsuits filed nationwide since 2022. One plaintiff, Nelson Fernandez, has filed suits against 312 businesses in that time. Defendants include New Balance, Bose, DraftKings, and Dunkin’.

The pattern holds. With overlay or without. With audit or without. The letter arrives.

Overlays fail to stop lawsuits. They sometimes invite them.

Hundreds of suits land on businesses that thought they bought protection.¹

Courts have weighed in.⁴ The widget can become evidence against you.

A follow-up Boston 25 piece,⁵ documents how law firms turned quick sue-and-settle cases into a repeatable business model. In New York, named plaintiffs were paid about $500 per settlement. Settlements ran into the tens of thousands.

The widget costs more than its subscription.

Does an accessibility overlay make my site ADA compliant?

No. An overlay sits on top of your site. It adjusts what the screen shows. It leaves the underlying code untouched. Courts reject the widget as proof of compliance. The FTC calls the marketing deceptive. Sara Campbell’s three lawsuits prove the gap.

Was accessiBe sued or fined?

Yes, accessiBe was fined. The FTC ordered accessiBe to pay $1 million in April 2025 for deceptive marketing.² Federal regulators said the widget falls short of ensuring compliance.

The exposure stacks up

Most suits land on small and mid-sized businesses, the companies least able to absorb a settlement.⁶ The filings concentrate in New York, California, and Florida, and a plaintiff in one of those states can reach a business anywhere in the country.⁷

In California, the Unruh Civil Rights Act adds a minimum of $4,000 in statutory damages per violation on top of attorney’s fees.⁸ That fee-shifting rule is what drives the sue-and-settle model Campbell described. About 1 in 4 U.S. adults has a disability that affects how they use the web,⁹ so the audience these barriers block is large, and the legal exposure they create is broad.

What works: fixes in the code itself

An overlay sits on top of your site. It adjusts what the screen shows. Code-level fixes change the code itself. Examples:

1. Add alt text to every image so screen readers describe the picture.
2. Fix color contrast ratios so text stays readable.
3. Label every form field so assistive tech knows what to fill in.
4. Make sure keyboard navigation reaches every button and link.
5. Add proper heading structure so screen readers can outline the page.¹⁰ The fixes are achievable. They live in the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript of your site. They persist. They survive a redesign.

An overlay can break. Users can disable it. Assistive tech can block it. Courts reject it.

Your next step

Run the free scan at systivate.com. The scan checks your site for ADA and WCAG violations. You get an evidence trail showing each issue and where it lives in the code. Then you ship code-level fixes, the kind courts accept and users benefit from.

You installed an overlay because you wanted to do right by your customers. The intent was good. The product failed you. Federal regulators said so. The courts say so. Sara Campbell’s three lawsuits say so.

You can still fix this. The fix lives in your code.

Sources

1. Test Party, Why 800+ Businesses with AccessiBe Were Still Sued (2025)
2. Federal Trade Commission, FTC Approves Final Order Requiring accessiBe to Pay $1 Million (2025)
3. Boston 25 News, 25 Investigates: Small businesses caught in surge of ADA website lawsuits (Kerry Kavanaugh)
4. Half Accessible, Do Accessibility Overlays Prevent ADA Lawsuits? What Courts Have Ruled
5. Boston 25 News, 25 Investigates: Businesses push back as ADA website lawsuits surge nationwide (Kerry Kavanaugh)
6. UsableNet, 2025 Year-End Report on Web Accessibility Lawsuits (2025)
7. Accessibility.com, Complete Report: 2024 Website Accessibility Lawsuits (2024)
8. California Legislature, Civil Code section 52 (statutory damages under the Unruh Civil Rights Act)
9. CDC, Disability Impacts All of Us (infographic)
10. WebAIM, The 2025 Million (2025)