I don’t know if it’s only in Luxembourg, but lately, I see more and more websites adding "accessibility menus" since the European Accessibility Act came into effect.
An accessibility menu allows users to customize certain site presentation settings related to accessibility, such as changing text size, enabling enhanced contrast, managing text spacing, etc. Some of those are packaged under commercial solutions called "accessibility overlays".
It often feels like a short-term fix to say, “we did something,” instead of addressing the real accessibility issues in design, code, and content. Maybe it’s a temporary measure while teams work on long-term improvements?
@AccessibilityLU published a study in 2024 showing something quite interesting: the presence of such accessibility menus, actually correlated with lower accessibility scores.
Full study: https://accessibilite.public.lu/en/news/2025-03-18-menus.html
https://accessibilite.public.lu/en/news/2025-03-18-menus.html
During our 2024 audit campaign, we discovered that more and more websites are implementing an "accessibility menu." In 2024, 20% of the sites for which we conducted a simplified audit had one. Here's an analysis of the impact of these menus on the accessibility of sites that use this technology.
So without a real accessibility strategy, these tools might not only fail to help, but could even make things worse.
Have you noticed the same trend in your country or projects?
Only anecdotally, but yes, I've noticed this.
It strikes me as a sticking plaster approach. A bit like publishing FAQs instead of doing the hard work to understand why those questions are asked so frequently and addressing the underlying problem.
Stef Walter
David O'Brien