Straight comparison
Squarespace accessibility: every option compared
There are four realistic ways to deal with accessibility on a Squarespace site. Here is what each one actually does, what it costs, and what you are left holding afterwards.
One thing worth saying plainly first: none of these options makes a site “compliant.” Compliance is a legal determination, not a product feature, and any vendor promising it is overselling. What these options differ on is whether the underlying barriers get removed, and whether that keeps happening as your site changes.
| Overlay widget | Do it yourself | Web agency project | Kat ADA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What changes in your source code | Nothing. A script re-paints the page in each visitor’s browser at runtime. | Whatever you edit by hand, in the Squarespace editor. | Real source edits, at the point in time you pay for them. | Real source edits, made for you, every month. |
| If the script is switched off | The changes vanish and the page reverts. | Not applicable. Your edits are in the content. | Not applicable. The work is in the content. | Not applicable. The work is in the content. |
| Typical cost | Roughly $490 to $1,000 a year, per site. | Free, plus your time. | Commonly $2,000 to $10,000 as a one-off project. | From $25 a month, based on page count. |
| What happens next month | The widget keeps running. New pages you publish are patched at runtime, never fixed. | Nothing, unless you check again yourself. | Nothing. New pages and edits drift out of scope until you commission more work. | Every page is rescanned and new issues are fixed, so a site that keeps changing keeps getting checked. |
| Written record of the work | A dashboard of widget activity. | Whatever you keep yourself. | A project deliverable, dated to the project. | A dated WCAG 2.1 AA report each month, listing what was found and what was fixed. |
| Skill needed from you | Paste one script. | You need to read WCAG and know Squarespace’s markup. | Brief the agency, then review. | Grant contributor access once. |
| Where it falls short | Screen-reader users still hit the underlying structure. Overlays have themselves been named in demand letters. | Easy to miss whole rule categories, and slow to repeat monthly. | Accurate on the day. Goes stale as soon as the site changes. | Squarespace sites only, and we cannot promise any legal outcome. |
How to choose
If your site almost never changes and you have the time to learn WCAG, doing it yourself is genuinely viable, and we would rather tell you that than sell you something. If you are rebuilding the site anyway, an agency doing the work as part of the build makes sense. An overlay is the fastest to install and the least likely to remove an actual barrier.
What we do is the narrow case in between: a Squarespace site that keeps changing, an owner who does not want to learn WCAG, and a need for a written record each month rather than a one-off certificate.