Removing an accessibility widget is a two-step job, and the order matters: cancel the subscription first, then delete the script from your site. Deleting the code alone does not stop the billing — accessiBe’s uninstall guide says it outright: “Uninstalling accessWidget does not cancel your subscription. You’ll continue to be charged unless you cancel your plan separately.” And cancellation itself has deadlines: miss the notice window on a yearly plan and you can be billed for another full cycle.
The vendors’ help pages will walk you through their side of it. What they won’t lay out is the whole exit — the renewal traps, the leftover code, and what should replace the widget so your site isn’t simply back where it started. That’s this checklist.
Why deleting the code doesn’t stop the billing
The widget and the subscription are two separate things. The widget is a one-line script on your pages; the subscription is a license agreement that renews on its own schedule, whether or not the script is still installed.
accessiBe’s terms of service state that licenses are “automatically renewed by default” — for 30-day periods on monthly plans and 12-month periods on annual plans. UserWay’s terms work the same way: “The Services will renew automatically at the end of the term unless terminated by You thirty (30) days prior to the end of the subscription term.”
So a site owner who quietly deletes the script in August and forgets about the account can wake up to a full annual renewal charge in October — for a widget that isn’t even on the site anymore. Cancel first.
Step 1 — Cancel the subscription (mind the notice windows)
Find your renewal date before you do anything else. It’s in your vendor dashboard and on your last invoice or card statement. Then count backward, because the notice windows are strict:
| Vendor / billing route | Plan | Notice required to stop renewal | Where to cancel |
|---|---|---|---|
| accessiBe (accessWidget) | Yearly | At least 30 days before the license period ends | Customer Portal → My Licenses → Manage → Cancel license |
| accessiBe (accessWidget) | Monthly | At least 15 days before the license period ends | Same portal path |
| accessiBe (Enterprise / via a sales rep) | Any | Can’t cancel from the portal | Contact accessiBe support directly |
| UserWay | Any term | 30 days before the subscription term ends | Account settings, or email support@userway.org |
| Widget app billed through Shopify | Recurring | None — uninstalling the app cancels future recurring charges | Uninstall from Shopify admin |
| Widget billed outside your platform | Recurring | Whatever the vendor’s terms say | With the vendor directly |
Those accessiBe numbers come from the company’s own cancellation article, which adds the part that stings: “If you cancel after the required notice period, your license will remain active until the next renewal cycle and will be canceled at the end of that period.” On an annual plan, a late cancellation can mean paying for a year of a widget you’ve already removed.
Two more details worth knowing. UserWay’s cancellation request must include your full name, the domain, and a copy of your receipt or payment confirmation, per its terms — and new UserWay subscribers get a 14-day window to cancel after signup. And if your widget bills through Shopify, Shopify’s documentation notes you “might still be billed for the current billing cycle,” and that uninstalling from the admin “doesn’t cancel external charges” for apps that bill outside Shopify.
Whatever the vendor, get the cancellation confirmed in writing — accessiBe emails a confirmation; save it. If your dashboard has an auto-renew toggle, turn it off too.
Step 2 — Delete the widget code, platform by platform
Once the cancellation is confirmed, remove the script. You’ve paid through the current period either way, so you can do this immediately or on your renewal date — but do it deliberately, not someday.
Hand-coded or custom sites. Search your templates for the vendor’s script. accessiBe’s snippet loads from acsbapp.com and, per its uninstall guide, usually sits in the footer “or just before the closing /body tag.” UserWay’s loads widget.js from cdn.userway.org and its install guide places it in the head of the page. Delete the entire script block, on every template it appears in, then publish.
WordPress. If you installed the vendor’s plugin, deactivate and delete it from the Plugins screen. If someone pasted the snippet by hand, check your header/footer-injection plugin, your theme’s custom-code field, and the theme’s header and footer template files. A site search for “acsbapp” or “userway” in your theme editor finds it fast.
Shopify. Duplicate your live theme first as a backup. If the widget came from a Shopify app, uninstall the app — then still open the code editor and search theme.liquid for the vendor name, because Shopify itself warns that “some apps add code to your online store theme that isn’t automatically removed when you uninstall the app” (Shopify Help Center). If the snippet was pasted manually, it’s almost always in theme.liquid near the closing body tag. Delete the block, save, and spot-check the storefront.
Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, and other builders. Look where custom scripts live: Wix keeps them under Settings in the custom-code panel; Squarespace under code injection in advanced settings; most builders have an equivalent “custom HTML” or “header scripts” area. Remove the vendor’s snippet there. If you can’t find it, the verification step below tells you whether it’s still loading and from where.
How do you verify the widget is actually gone?
Load your site in a private/incognito window and confirm the floating icon is gone — a normal window may show you a cached copy. Then check the code, which takes one minute and no expertise:
- Open your homepage, right-click, and choose “View page source.”
- Search the source (Ctrl+F / Cmd+F) for
acsbapp,accessibe,userway, or your vendor’s name. - Repeat on two or three other page types — a product page, a blog post, a contact page — since different templates can carry their own copy of the script.
- If a match survives, note which page it’s on; that tells you which template or code panel still has the snippet.
Nothing found on any template? The widget is off your site. Now the part the vendor help docs skip entirely.
Will your site be less accessible without the widget?
For most sites, no — because the widget was never repairing the code underneath. Missing alt text, unlabeled form fields, low-contrast text, and keyboard traps live in your HTML, and an overlay script doesn’t rewrite that HTML; the mechanics are covered in why overlays don’t work. In January 2025, the FTC ordered accessiBe to pay $1 million to settle allegations that it misrepresented its widget’s ability to make any website WCAG-compliant — a federal regulator’s answer to how much compliance the icon in the corner was buying you.
It also wasn’t buying legal protection. Businesses running widgets get sued anyway, month after month, and some complaints cite the widget itself. So removing it doesn’t strip away a shield — but it also doesn’t fix anything. If you remove the widget and replace it with nothing, your site is exactly as inaccessible as it was the day before you bought it. The exit only makes sense with a replacement plan.
Your 30-day replacement plan
You don’t need to remediate an entire site in a month. You need to know what’s broken, fix the worst of it, and set a trajectory. Here’s a realistic sequence for a small-business site:
- Days 1–3: Get a baseline. Run a free automated scan and do the 10-minute keyboard test yourself. Together they surface the barriers the widget was sitting on top of.
- Days 4–10: Get a real audit. An accessibility audit tests your key pages with a screen reader and against WCAG 2.1 AA — the standard US courts and the DOJ point to — and hands you a prioritized fix list instead of a guess.
- Days 11–25: Fix the highest-impact barriers. In our experience that’s usually alt text, form labels and error messages, color contrast, and keyboard operability on menus and checkout. These are code fixes — manual remediation, done in your actual templates, not a layer over them.
- Days 26–30: Make it stick. Publish an accessibility statement (our free generator drafts one) with a working contact method, and set up monitoring so new pages don’t quietly reintroduce old problems.
Budget note: you’ll no longer be paying the widget subscription. Redirecting a year of widget fees toward fixing your top barriers buys permanent improvements instead of renting a layer — the math we walk through in overlay vs. manual remediation.
The short version
Cancel before you delete — in writing, inside the notice window. Remove the script from every template and verify with a source-code search. Then replace the widget with something that actually works: real fixes, in your real code, against WCAG 2.1 AA.
If you want to know exactly what the widget was covering up before you pull it, run a free accessibility scan — it takes a minute and gives you the starting list for your 30 days.