Many websites use accessibility overlay to help visually impaired users, but some people are concerned that this may affect their website performance. Following are some common questions about it. Often people think that the usage of Accessibility Overlay will increase DOM nodes for their website, but it’s not true. The overlay plugin does a lot more work on scrolling and animation performance improvement than increasing the number of elements on a web page.

Here are some of the most common questions about Accessibility Overlay.

1. What is Accessibility Overlay?

Accessibility overlay (AI) is a technique to support accessibility for visually impaired users by adding an extra layer of content on top of what can be seen, which brings these extra elements into sight through visual text-to-speech software.

2. Will Accessibility Overlay Slow Down My Website?

No, the overlay plugin can make your website faster, not slower. it adds extra content on top of what can be seen with human eyes. It will increase animation performance, increasing the speed of your site.

3. Does AI increase the size of DOM nodes for my website?

AI helps in boosting the performance of websites. It does not increase the size of DOM nodes for your website.

4. Does AI slow down my scrolling?

No, it doesn’t affect your scrolling speed at all. The plugin has been built to make web browsing faster and easier for visually impaired users by increasing scroll performance on web pages using efficient jQuery plugins like Superfish.

5. Is there any conflict with other plugins?

No, this plugin does not conflict with any other JavaScript or jQuery libraries on your website.

6. Does AI increase the number of elements on my website?

AI helps boost the performance of websites. It does not affect the number of elements on your web page at all. A web page may contain thousands of DOM nodes, but Accessibility overlay adds content to just one layer that is visible through screen readers or text-to-speech software only. It will not affect the number of elements you already have on your web pages. If you are using Superfish dropdown menus, then remember to disable them first before making a link accessible as it affects the order and can render a page unreadable in the screen reader or browser.

7. Is it possible to add Accessibility Overlay using HTML markup?

It’s not possible to add accessibility overlay using HTML markup. The overlay is a jQuery plugin and should be added as a jQuery source order, which can be done by either adding an extra reference to the file or you can write code in your theme’s functions.php file.

8. How to make images accessible?

AI plugin will work on image elements only when the alt attribute of an image is populated with appropriate text like alt=”image name” in order to make it accessible.

9. How much time will the plugin take to load?

It’s very important for one to consider the time required by a website for its loading performance. Users don’t like when they have to wait long for any content on your web pages. AI module depends on jquery and has no major effect on your page’s loading performance. This plugin will increase the animation speed and scrolling performance speed of your website using efficient jQuery plugins like Superfish.