---
title: "accessiBe and the disability community"
language: en
canonical: https://dossiertwist.com/dossiers/accessibe/community/
as_of: 2026-10-10
keywords: ["accessiBe","accessiBe Ltd.","accessiBe Inc.","accessWidget","web accessibility overlay","WCAG","Americans with Disabilities Act","FTC consent order","FTC Docket C-4817","K1 Investment Management","Shir Ekerling","Dekel Skoop","Gal Vizel","Robert Lopez","Parikh v. Accessibe","AudioEye","UserWay","National Federation of the Blind","Overlay Fact Sheet","Litigation Pledge"]
---

# accessiBe and the disability community

**Question.** How have blind people's organisations and accessibility professionals responded to accessiBe, and which disability organisations work with it?

**Answer.** In 2021 the National Federation of the Blind revoked accessiBe's convention sponsorship, its board saying that the company's behaviour was harmful to the advancement of blind people, and the Overlay Fact Sheet, launched by Karl Groves and signed by hundreds of accessibility professionals and advocates, said that no overlay can make a site fully compliant. Critics also objected to how accessiBe dealt with them, including a private 2021 meeting with a blind advocate whose recording later leaked. In May 2023 co-founder Shir Ekerling apologised in the federation's magazine. accessiBe says it partners with hundreds of disability-focused nonprofits; The Third Place for Kids and the United Spinal Association record ties with it, while the other organisations it names as having given input have not confirmed this in the record.

## The National Federation of the Blind

- Analysis: On June 24, 2021 the National Federation of the Blind, the U.S. organisation of blind people, announced that its board had reviewed accessiBe's business practices and believed that accessiBe "currently engages in behavior that is harmful to the advancement of blind people in society", including by dismissing blind people's concerns about its products and treating blind access-technology experts disrespectfully, and that it had revoked accessiBe's sponsorship of the federation's 2021 national convention on June 22. The judgement is the board's opinion; the revocation is a documented act. A U.S. business magazine reported that accessiBe was given an opportunity to comment on the statement and declined. An online encyclopedia article on accessiBe states that the convention adopted resolutions condemning overlays as an inadequate solution and describing accessiBe's marketing and business practices as "disrespectful and misleading"; the resolutions themselves are not retained. Shir Ekerling later published an apology to the federation's members, in May 2023, but the retained records do not show the sponsorship being restored. [src-063] [src-116] [src-077] [src-009]
- Analysis: Critics objected to how accessiBe dealt with them. Chancey Fleet, a blind technology educator and vice-president of the federation's New York affiliate, was invited to a private meeting with accessiBe executives in February 2021 after criticising the product online; a U.S. network news report said that in leaked audio of the meeting Shir Ekerling called the advocates' public concerns a "demonization" of the company, and in June 2023 the podcast host Jonathan Mosen said accessiBe itself had leaked the recording to him to argue that Fleet was unreasonable; accessiBe's account of the recording is not in the record. In March 2021 the chief vision officer Michael Hingson defended the company on Mosen's podcast, referring to "a couple of the major detractors"; Adrian Roselli, one of those critics, wrote that he did not claim to speak for blind people, and reported that Fleet publicly accused Hingson of misrepresenting what she had said in her call with accessiBe and that his own transcript of the call did not match Hingson's account; Hingson's response to these points is not in the record. According to Roselli, an accessiBe blog post in 2020 described the founders blindfolding 600 Digital Ocean employees in Florida for a lecture simulating blindness, an exercise Roselli and Lainey Feingold criticised; the post itself is not retained. [src-095] [src-076]
- Analysis: In May 2023 Shir Ekerling, writing as accessiBe's founder, published an open letter of apology in the federation's monthly magazine. He apologised for how accessiBe had communicated and reacted to criticism and for "emphasizing our marketing on avoiding legal action", and wrote that its marketing department had been overhauled, its chief marketing officer replaced and previous campaigns discarded; the magazine's editor wrote that he hoped and believed it was a real step forward. In June 2023 Ekerling discussed the apology in a podcast interview with Jonathan Mosen. [src-077] [src-076]

## The Overlay Fact Sheet and other critics

- Analysis: Karl Groves launched the Overlay Fact Sheet on March 11, 2021. It names accessiBe among examples of accessibility overlays and concludes that no overlay on the market can make a website fully compliant with any accessibility standard or eliminate legal risk, calling promises of immediate compliance deceptive marketing. A U.S. network news report said in May 2021 that more than 400 blind people, advocates and developers had signed it, and the 2024 class action complaint put the number of signatories above 850. They include Steve Faulkner, listed as chief accessibility officer of TPGi, Haben Girma, Adrian Roselli, Groves, Lainey Feingold, Peter Jewett, the founder and chief executive of Accessible Web, with other Accessible Web staff, and the treasurer of the federation's Indiana affiliate. The Fact Sheet is a position of accessibility professionals and advocates, several of whom work for competing service providers. According to Roselli, Groves proposed a moderated debate with accessiBe for March 17, 2021, and accessiBe instead held its own webinar on March 16. The most cited critics are professionals in the field: Faulkner is a co-founder and director of the consultancy TetraLogical, formerly chief accessibility officer of TPGi, a member of W3C working groups on accessibility guidelines and ARIA and an editor of W3C specifications; Roselli has worked as an independent accessibility and user-experience consultant since 2015 and belongs to several W3C working groups; Girma is a disability-rights advocate and author, the first Deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School, who represented the federation in a lawsuit against Scribd before starting her own business in 2016. [src-076] [src-075] [src-058] [src-095] [src-024] [src-091] [src-088] [src-025]
- Analysis: Faulkner has said that accessibility plug-ins cannot fix fundamental issues or replicate browser functionality, and Girma has urged companies to stay away from accessiBe and similar vendors; she told a U.S. network news outlet in 2021 that she had problems using accessiBe's own site and that its ubiquitous advertising felt "like a personal attack on my humanity". In 2021 the co-founder of eSSENTIAL Accessibility, a competitor, told a U.S. business magazine that overlays make a website a target for lawsuits rather than protecting it. These are opinions of critics, one of them a competitor. The critics' website Overlay False Claims, active from 2021, documents what it calls false advertising by overlay vendors, accessiBe prominently among them, and collects lawsuits filed against overlay users. [src-009] [src-095] [src-116] [src-062]

## Partnerships, sponsorships and memberships

- Analysis: accessiBe describes close ties with disability organisations. Its releases say the product was developed with input from the National MS Society, United Cerebral Palsy, the Special Olympics USA Games and the Disability Foundation (May 2025) and from United Cerebral Palsy, the Special Olympics USA Games and the Parkinson's Foundation (August 2026); no confirmation from these organisations is in the record, and the lists differ between releases. The company says it partners with more than 600 or more than 700 disability-focused nonprofits, which receive its product free together with discounts, sponsorship and co-marketing, that it has donated $500,000 to accessibility nonprofits and recorded more than 300 podcasts with community leaders, and that in 2025 it set up an Inclusive Product Advisory Board; these figures are company statements and not verified. Of the organisations involved, The Third Place for Kids, a Colorado nonprofit, announced on April 9, 2025 that it was joining the Nonprofit Partnership Program, installing accessWidget and receiving marketing collaboration and funding, with a quote from Dekel Skoop as chief executive; and the United Spinal Association, which represents wheelchair users, lists accessiBe among its Premier Corporate Members, its president having welcomed accessiBe to the association's Tech Access Council in an October 2024 accessiBe release, without any contribution amount being stated. No retained statement of the other partners confirms or disputes accessiBe's description. [src-004] [src-033] [src-007] [src-092] [src-093] [src-124] [src-080]
- Analysis: In February 2021 accessiBe wrote that it was "in the process of joining the W3C", the standards body that publishes WCAG, and in July 2021 Roselli described it as a new W3C member; no W3C membership record is retained. Michael Hingson's podcast Unstoppable Mindset is provided by Access Cast, which it describes as an initiative of accessiBe, and is sponsored by accessiBe; an October 2025 episode still closed with the slogan of making the internet "fully inclusive by 2025", the goal accessiBe set when it hired him in 2021. [src-076] [src-089] [src-021]

## Sources

- [src-063] Company statement source · src-063
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- [src-009] Other source · src-009
- [src-095] Media source · src-095
- [src-076] Research source · src-076
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- [src-058] Court record source · src-058
- [src-024] Company statement source · src-024
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- [src-088] Other source · src-088
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- [src-062] Research source · src-062
- [src-004] Company statement source · src-004
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- [src-092] Company statement source · src-092
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- [src-124] Company statement source · src-124
- [src-080] Company statement source · src-080
- [src-089] Other source · src-089
- [src-021] Company statement source · src-021