If you are searching for an accessiBe or UserWay alternative for your Shopify store, the most important distinction is not which vendor has a nicer dashboard. It is the difference between an overlay and a code scanner. accessiBe and UserWay are accessibility overlays: JavaScript widgets that load in the browser and adjust the page at runtime. AccessifyAI is a different category. It scans your storefront, finds barriers, and suggests fixes to the actual theme code (Liquid and CSS) that you preview before you apply. This article explains why that distinction matters legally and technically, and where each approach fits.
What an overlay is, and what it is not
An overlay is a script tag you paste into your theme. It loads a button on the page. A visitor can open a panel and toggle settings like larger text, higher contrast, or paused animations. Behind the scenes the widget injects CSS overrides into the DOM and, in some cases, adds ARIA attributes through JavaScript.
What an overlay does not do is change the HTML your server delivers. A <div> that should be a heading stays a <div>. An image with no alt attribute still has no real alt in the source. Contrast values in your CSS are untouched. The adjustments depend on the script loading, the widget being found, and the visitor knowing to use it, and most screen reader users do not interact with these widgets at all.
This is the core reason an overlay is not the same as remediation. Courts, auditors, and automated scanners assess the source code that the page actually ships, which is exactly what an overlay leaves unchanged. We cover the mechanics in depth in our piece on why accessibility overlays do not protect against ADA lawsuits.
The legal record on overlays
Two verifiable facts should anchor any decision about overlay vendors.
First, the FTC. In January 2025 the United States Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with accessiBe, the largest overlay vendor. The settlement required a 1 million USD payment and prohibited accessiBe from claiming that its product alone makes a website compliant with the ADA or WCAG. This is the most authoritative federal statement so far that overlay marketing has overstated what the technology delivers.
Second, the precedent. In Robles v. Domino's Pizza, LLC, 913 F.3d 898 (9th Cir. 2019), the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the ADA applies to websites and mobile apps tied to a physical place of public accommodation, and that a plaintiff does not need a specific federal web-accessibility regulation to bring a claim. US courts have applied ADA Title III to such websites. An overlay does not change that analysis, because the question the court asks is about access in the delivered experience, not which remediation tools the operator installed.
For merchants selling into the EU, the relevant framework is the European Accessibility Act (EU Directive 2019/882), which references WCAG through the harmonised norm EN 301 549. The same logic applies there: conformance is assessed against the actual delivered interface, not a runtime widget layered on top. If you sell to EU consumers, see our guide to EAA compliance for Shopify Plus in 2026.
To be direct and honest: no tool, including AccessifyAI, makes your store "ADA compliant" or "legally compliant" by itself. Compliance is a property of your whole site and your ongoing process, not of any single app. What a tool can do is help you find barriers and fix the underlying code so the delivered page is genuinely better.
How a code scanner differs from an overlay
AccessifyAI works on the layer that overlays leave alone: the theme. It scans your storefront against WCAG 2.2 success criteria, reports the specific issues it finds, and proposes changes to your Liquid and CSS. You see the suggested change before anything is applied, and the fix lands in your theme code, where it survives a page reload, works without JavaScript, and is reviewable like any other source change.
Here is the practical contrast for common issues:
| Issue | Overlay behaviour (accessiBe / UserWay) | Code scanner fix (AccessifyAI) |
|---|---|---|
| Image with no alt text | AI guesses alt at runtime, often wrong | Suggests real alt in the product image field or alt="" for decorative images |
| Missing form label | Injects an aria-label via JS after load |
Adds a real <label for="..."> in the form template |
| Low colour contrast | Adds a "high contrast" CSS layer on click | Updates the brand colour token in your CSS to meet the 4.5:1 ratio (WCAG 2.2, SC 1.4.3) |
| Wrong heading order | Cannot restructure the DOM | Refactors the section template to use correct heading tags |
| Focus not visible | Adds a focus ring via JS, not consistently | Removes outline: none from the global CSS |
The right-hand column produces HTML that is accessible from the first millisecond of load. The left-hand column produces adjustments that exist only after a script runs and a visitor opts in.