AccessiScroll

Widens and recolors scrollbars on every site, so they're easy to see and grab regardless of what pointing device you use.

Why I built this

I rely on a gyroscopic mouse to use my computer. On more and more of the modern web, that's a problem: scrollbars are styled to be razor-thin, only appear on hover, or are hidden completely. Websites today seem to be designed on the assumption that everyone scrolls with a mouse wheel or a trackpad flick — and if you can't, you're left trying to land a pointer on a 4-pixel sliver of a scrollbar (if there's one at all).

For people with motor disabilities, that tiny target isn't a minor annoyance — it can make a site effectively unusable. Fitts's law is unforgiving: the smaller the target, the harder and slower it is to hit, and tremor or limited fine motor control multiplies that cost.

I couldn't find an extension that reliably fixed this on every site — many sites deliberately override scrollbar styling with !important rules that defeat ordinary CSS injection — so I built one. AccessiScroll gives you back a big, visible, grabbable scrollbar on any site you choose, in whatever size and colors work for your eyes and your hands.

This project is part of my broader work on accessibility at myaccessibility.ai. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.

Install (unpacked, for personal use)

1. Open chrome://extensions in Chrome.
2. Turn on Developer mode (top-right toggle).
3. Click Load unpacked and select this accessiscroll folder.
4. Pin the extension (puzzle-piece icon in the toolbar → pin AccessiScroll) so it's always one click away.

Using it

• Click the toolbar icon to open the popup: a size slider (12–32px), thumb/track color pickers, a per-site on/off switch, and a global on/off switch.
• Changes apply instantly to the page you're currently viewing, and are remembered for every site you visit afterward.
• If AccessiScroll ever clashes with a specific site's own UI, turn it off for that site from the popup — it'll stay off there until you turn it back on (from the popup, or Manage disabled sites in the options page).
• Keyboard shortcut Alt+Shift+S toggles AccessiScroll on/off for the current site without needing to click anything. You can rebind it at chrome://extensions/shortcuts.

How it works (short version)

Scrollbar CSS is injected as a user-origin stylesheet (chrome.scripting.insertCSS with origin: "USER"), which is the one mechanism guaranteed to win cascade fights against sites that hide/thin their scrollbar with !important. It styles the ::-webkit-scrollbar pseudo-elements with your chosen pixel width and colors. The standard CSS scrollbar-width/scrollbar-color properties are deliberately not used: scrollbar-width can't express pixel sizes (only auto/thin/none), and in Chrome 121+ setting either standard property causes the browser to ignore all ::-webkit-scrollbar-* rules — which would silently break the width control.

Known limitations

• Sites that fake scrolling entirely with JS/canvas (no real native scrollbar) can't be styled this way — there's nothing for CSS to target.
• On slow-loading pages you may briefly see the page's original scrollbar before AccessiScroll applies, since injection happens right after navigation rather than before first paint.