Should I Use An Accessibility Overlay?

The answer is no, of course.

The impetus for this little page came from answering this question at work on a fairly regular and alarming basis, so I thought it might be nice to succinctly answer the question in a manner that colleagues and stakeholders could easily digest and share. I and many others in the web design industry see overlays as a danger to disabled people and to accessibility and inclusion overall, so having a simple resource to answer it seemed like a pretty good idea.

I post this with special thanks to Jared Smith, who inspired me with his website, Should I Use A Carousel? (Spolier: The answer is also no.) and to the disability and web communities for rallying around it and sharing it far and wide. It was very gratifying to see.