Accessibility isn't a checkbox.
It's a measure of who your business is open to.
About one in six people on Earth lives with some form of disability. Aging populations push that number higher every year. The web is the place most of them try to do business — if your site doesn't work for them, you didn't lose a feature. You lost a customer.
The data behind "nice to have."
Three pillars. No shortcuts.
Real accessibility isn't a single decision — it's a set of habits baked into how the site is built. These are the three we apply on every project.
Built to standard, at the source
Every site we author targets WCAG 2.1 Level AA — not by bolting an overlay on top, but by writing the markup, contrast, and keyboard structure correctly the first time. Standards-grade HTML doesn't go out of date.
Honest about limits
No vendor — including us — can promise an injected script will "make any site accessible." We say what our tools do, and what they don't. When a site has structural issues, we fix the site, not the symptoms.
User control, on every page
Visitors get a built-in panel for adjustable text size, contrast, motion, and reading aids. Their choices persist across pages. That panel — UserPrefs — runs on every site we maintain at no additional cost.
Why we replaced our SaaS overlay with something we built.
For years, the studio paid a monthly subscription to a SaaS accessibility overlay. The marketing claim — "AI fixes any site automatically" — has been challenged repeatedly by accessibility experts and disability-rights organizations. In April 2025, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission fined the leading overlay vendor $1 million for deceptive claims that its AI could make websites WCAG-compliant, and barred it from making such claims going forward. In practice, overlay-driven alt-text is often wrong, overlay-driven ARIA can collide with legitimate ARIA, and overlay-using sites are still named defendants in ADA lawsuits — having an overlay installed does not, on its own, stop a complaint from being filed.
"Accessibility overlays do not, and cannot, fix the underlying accessibility issues of a site. They simply hide them."Joint statement, signed by 600+ accessibility advocates
So we did the work. We built our own user-facing accessibility widget — UserPrefs — that handles the legitimate layer of overlay tooling: adjustable text, contrast, motion, reading aids. It does not pretend to "fix" a broken site. The site itself gets built right. That's the only honest path.
The widget we built — and gave to every client.
Self-hosted. Single script tag. Roughly 17 KB on the wire. Every site under Wandzilak management runs UserPrefs at no extra cost. Click the bubble in the lower corner of this page to try it.
- 7 user profiles
- Font & contrast controls
- Reading guide & mask
- Stop-animations toggle
- Big-cursor option
- Keyboard-only mode
- 27 language slots
- Persists across pages
What clients usually ask.
Is wandzilakwebdesign.com itself WCAG 2.1 AA conformant?
Yes. As of May 2026, this site has been evaluated against and conforms to WCAG 2.1 Level AA, with documented exceptions for third-party content delivered by the hosting platform's edge security layer. The site is re-evaluated annually; the next review is scheduled for May 2027.
What standard do you build to?
WCAG 2.1 Level AA — the standard referenced by the U.S. Department of Justice, the ADA, the European Accessibility Act, and most enforcement actions. Sites we build are intended to meet AA conformance through markup, contrast, focus, and keyboard structure — not through an injected overlay.
Do you use AccessiBe or similar overlays?
No. We replaced our SaaS overlay with the self-hosted UserPrefs widget we built ourselves. UserPrefs handles the user-facing layer; the underlying site is built right at the source. We do not pretend an injected script can substitute for accessible markup.
Is UserPrefs available on every site you've built?
Yes — at no cost to the client, on any site under our maintenance. The widget is licensed for use on Wandzilak Studio properties and the client sites we host. It loads from a single domain, weighs about 17 KB after gzip, and respects user preferences via localStorage.
What if I have an accessibility complaint about a Wandzilak-built site?
Email mike@wandzilakwebdesign.com with the specific page and the issue. Real complaints get a real response, usually within one business day. We do not gate accessibility behind a form or a SaaS vendor.
Got a site that needs accessible markup — not just an overlay? Or an existing site that needs an honest audit? Either is a real conversation, not a sales pitch.
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