An overlay is not compliance. We will not tell you otherwise
This industry has a bad habit: a widget is sold as instant compliance, the buyer relaxes, and the site is still unusable with a screen reader. A menu cannot write the alt text you never wrote, cannot name the form field you never labelled, and cannot invent the caption track your video does not have. Overlay vendors have been sued over precisely that gap, and disability advocates have spent years asking people to stop selling it. So Poliogo ships both halves and is explicit about which does what.
- ✓The menu is a remediation surface. The scan is what tells you what to actually fix.
- ✓Neither one, on its own or together, is a conformance certificate — and your statement says so in writing.
What the scan can prove, and what it cannot
Poliogo reads your markup and stylesheets the same way it reads your dependencies: manifest parsing and pattern matching over the literal source, with no parser and no runtime. Every finding points at a file and a line, so you can check our work. What it reports is a real failure — never a guess. What it stays silent about is not a pass.
- ✓It reads markup as written, not as rendered — an image whose props are spread from a variable is missed, and we say so rather than implying full coverage.
- ✓Roughly a third of WCAG is only decidable by a person: whether alt text is accurate, whether a focus order is meaningful, whether an error message helps. No scanner settles those, ours included.
- ✓That is exactly why your statement claims partial conformance. Claiming more, off a clean automated run, is an unsubstantiated statement in a published legal document.
One benchmark, many laws: the ADA, EN 301 549 and IS 5568
Accessibility law is global, and nearly all of it points at the same benchmark. In the US, website lawsuits under the ADA are argued against WCAG. The EU Web Accessibility Directive requires conformance through EN 301 549 — which incorporates WCAG — plus a published accessibility statement, and the European Accessibility Act extends the reach considerably. Israel adopts WCAG through Israeli Standard 5568 under the Equal Rights for Persons with Disabilities Regulations (Service Accessibility), 5773–2013, and requires a statement naming a person who answers complaints. Poliogo produces that statement from your real configuration, in your site's own language and direction.
- ✓The statement names your accessibility contact, their email, and a telephone number if you give one — the route to a person that both regimes require.
- ✓It commits to a reply within 7 working days and a resolution or alternative route within 30, and says where to escalate if you do not deliver.
- ✓It lists known limitations honestly — third-party embeds you do not control, older PDFs — rather than pretending the site is uniform.
- ✓Statements follow your site's language and direction — right-to-left throughout for Hebrew — and the menu matches your page on every plan.
The widget itself has to be accessible. Most are not
An accessibility menu that traps keyboard focus, or that inverts itself along with the page so the button turning inversion off disappears, is the failure it was installed to prevent. Poliogo's is built against its own rules.
- ✓Every control is a real button with an accessible name and a pressed state — never a div with a click handler, which a screen reader cannot see and voice control cannot address.
- ✓Escape closes the panel from anywhere, and Tab cycles inside it rather than trapping — WCAG 2.1.2, the criterion overlays fail most often.
- ✓Alt + 0 opens the menu from anywhere on the page, for a visitor who never reaches the button.
- ✓It draws inside a closed shadow root with its own stylesheet, so your CSS cannot break it and its CSS cannot leak into your design.
- ✓The palette filters deliberately exclude the widget, so the menu never inverts itself out of reach.
- ✓Switching a tool announces the change to a screen reader without moving focus.
One line, or no lines
The studio gives you a single script tag to paste before your closing body tag — one paste, whether or not Poliogo is connected to your repository; the compliance pull request does not add it yet. Everything after that is served from us: change the colour, switch a tool off, and your visitors get it without you deploying anything.
- ✓The design studio previews the real widget — position, icon, brand colour, language — and Try it mode applies the tools to the preview so you can see what a visitor gets.
- ✓Running a strict Content-Security-Policy? Pass your nonce on the script URL — for the accessibility widget and the cookie banner alike — and both mount fully styled under it.
- ✓Already have your own accessibility button? Hide ours and open the menu from your own code.
What you get
The menu, the scan and the statement — from the same snippet that already carries your cookie banner.
On every plan, including Free
Free planThe menu and all fourteen tools work on the free plan. A widget behind a paywall is an accessibility barrier with a price on it, and the law does not care what you pay us.
It finds the real failures in your code
Images with no alt text, form fields with no label, pages that declare no language, buttons only a mouse can reach, pinch-zoom switched off, contrast below 4.5:1 — each one reported with the file and the line.
Your statement, written and kept current
Published at a real address, naming a person to complain to, describing exactly the tools you switched on and what the last scan found. It updates when you change something, because it is generated rather than stored.
Your page's language and direction, followed
The menu reads your site's own lang attribute and lays itself out in your page's own direction, left-to-right or right-to-left — a Hebrew page gets a Hebrew menu, RTL, on every plan. A menu a visitor cannot read is not an accessibility feature.
It does not slow your site down
Zero dependenciesOne small script, no framework, no font download, no request to anyone. It loads after your page and never blocks a render.
Nothing about the visitor reaches us
Their choices — that they need 150% text, that motion makes them ill — are health-adjacent facts about a person. They stay in that visitor's own browser and are never sent to us or to you.
What each plan changes
The menu, every tool in it, every language pack, the scan and the published statement are on every plan including Free. What upgrades is the styling around it.
| Poliogo | Typical overlay vendor | |
|---|---|---|
| The menu and all its tools | Every plan, Free included | Paid, per domain |
| Code scan with file and line | Every plan | Rarely offered |
| Accessibility statement | Generated and kept current | A template you fill in |
| Conformance claim | Partial, and says why | Often claims full conformance |
| Multi-language / RTL menu | Every plan | Add-on |
| Brand colour, icon, corner | Starter and up | Paid tier |
| Your own statement URL | Pro Builder and up | Paid tier |
| “Powered by” removed | Pro Builder and up | Paid tier |
| Full CSS override | Agency | Rarely offered |
The comparison column describes the overlay market as a category, not any one named vendor.
Questions people ask
Does installing this make my site conform to WCAG?
No, and nobody's widget does. The menu lets a visitor adapt your page — bigger text, stronger contrast, no motion. It cannot write alt text you never wrote or label a form field you never labelled. That is what the scan is for: it finds those failures in your own code so you can fix them. Your published statement says the site is partly conformant and explains why an automated scan can never prove more.
Is the accessibility menu really on the free plan?
Yes — the menu and all fourteen tools, in every language it ships in, plus the scan and the published statement. Putting a disabled visitor's tools behind a paywall would be the clearest possible version of the mistake this feature exists to fix. Starter adds your brand colour, icon and corner; Pro Builder lets you point the statement link at your own page and removes the Poliogo line; Agency adds a full CSS override.
Does it work on a right-to-left site?
Yes. The menu reads your page's own lang attribute and follows its direction, so a Hebrew page gets a Hebrew menu laid out right-to-left, on every plan. The accessibility statement is generated in the language your documents are published in, and for Israeli sites it cites Israeli Standard 5568 and the Equal Rights Regulations by name.
Will it slow my site down or break my design?
It is one small script with no framework, no dependencies and no font or image downloads — it loads after your page and never blocks a render. It draws inside a closed shadow root with its own stylesheet, so nothing of ours can reach your design and nothing of yours can break the menu.
What happens to a visitor's accessibility settings?
They stay in that visitor's own browser and go nowhere else. That someone needs 150% text, or that motion makes them ill, is a health-adjacent fact about a person — it is not sent to us, it is not sent to you, and it is not in any log.
How does the scan know what to look for?
It runs a library of WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 level AA rules — the benchmark the ADA, EN 301 549 and Israeli Standard 5568 all build on — plus the requirements IS 5568 adds on top, over your markup and stylesheets. Each rule names the success criterion it comes from, what a visitor experiences when it fails, and what to change. The library is served from our edge as well as shipped in the scanner, so when a standard moves your scans pick it up without you upgrading anything.
Can I use my own accessibility button instead of the floating one?
Yes, from Pro Builder. Hide ours in the studio and call window.poliogoAccess.open() from your own control. The keyboard shortcut Alt + 0 keeps working either way, so a visitor who cannot find your button can still reach the menu.
Add the menu, then fix what the scan finds
Both halves are on the free plan, for one project, with no card.
Start free — no credit cardPoliogo is an automated code analysis and document display tool, not a law firm. Poliogo does not provide legal advice, representation, or guarantees of statutory compliance, ADA/WCAG certification, or legal immunity. Visual banners and generated documents are advisory tools and do not substitute for professional legal review.