To enhance the accessibility of your Figma designs, here are the detailed steps:

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Start by integrating specialized plugins that automate checks and provide real-time feedback. For instance, the A11y – Color Contrast Checker plugin https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/732551461090155092/A11y---Color-Contrast-Checker is invaluable for ensuring your text and background colors meet WCAG standards. Next, utilize Stark https://www.getstark.co/ for a comprehensive accessibility toolkit, offering contrast checking, alt-text suggestions, and even focus order visualization. To manage your design system effectively with accessibility in mind, explore Able https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/736171804797079361/Able which helps maintain accessible color palettes. Finally, for a quick audit of elements like text size and spacing, consider Contrast https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/733221975971485640/Contrast. These tools, used in conjunction, will significantly streamline your accessibility review process in Figma.

Table of Contents

The Imperative of Inclusive Design in a Digital Age

It’s about ensuring that products, services, and environments are usable by as many people as possible, regardless of age, ability, or circumstance.

Neglecting accessibility is not just a moral failing. it’s a significant business oversight.

Globally, over 1.3 billion people experience significant disability, representing 16% of the world’s population. This isn’t a small segment.

It’s a substantial user base with purchasing power and influence.

Designing without them in mind means consciously excluding a considerable market share and potential customers. Xpath ends with function

Furthermore, accessibility often leads to better usability for everyone, enhancing user experience across the board.

Think of curb cuts, originally designed for wheelchairs, now benefiting parents with strollers, delivery workers, and travelers with luggage.

This principle, known as the “curb cut effect,” applies equally to digital design.

Why Accessibility is More Than Just Compliance

Accessibility extends beyond merely ticking boxes for legal compliance.

It’s about fostering empathy, promoting equality, and building a truly universal product. Unruh act

While regulations like the Americans with Disabilities Act ADA in the U.S.

And the European Accessibility Act provide legal frameworks, the spirit of accessibility lies in creating a welcoming and functional experience for all.

A recent study by the World Health Organization WHO and the World Bank highlighted that people with disabilities face significant barriers to accessing basic services, including digital ones.

By prioritizing accessibility, designers contribute to breaking down these barriers, empowering individuals, and fostering digital equity.

It’s a proactive approach that anticipates diverse user needs, rather than reacting to them after the fact. Unit tests with junit and mockito

The Business Case for Accessible Design

Beyond ethical considerations, there’s a compelling business case for investing in accessibility.

Companies that prioritize accessibility often see a positive return on investment.

According to a report by Accenture, companies that champion disability inclusion outperform their peers across various financial metrics, including 28% higher revenue, 30% higher economic profit margins, and double the net income. This is not coincidental. Accessible websites and applications often have:

Wider Market Reach: Tapping into the significant market of people with disabilities and their families.
Improved SEO: Many accessibility best practices, such as clear semantic HTML and alt-text for images, align directly with SEO best practices, leading to higher search engine rankings.
Reduced Legal Risks: Mitigating the risk of lawsuits and legal penalties for non-compliance. In the U.S. alone, web accessibility lawsuits have been on a continuous rise, with thousands of cases filed annually.
Enhanced Brand Reputation: Demonstrating a commitment to social responsibility and inclusivity, which resonates positively with consumers.
Better Usability for All: Features designed for accessibility, like clear navigation and high contrast, often improve the user experience for everyone, including those in challenging environments e.g., bright sunlight, noisy surroundings.

Leveraging Figma for Accessible Design Workflows

Figma has rapidly become the design tool of choice for many professionals, lauded for its collaborative features and intuitive interface.

However, its native capabilities for accessibility checking are limited. Browserstack newsletter march 2025

This is where the power of its robust plugin ecosystem truly shines.

Integrating accessibility checks directly into your Figma workflow early in the design process is paramount.

Catching issues during the design phase is significantly more cost-effective than fixing them in development.

Research from IBM suggests that fixing accessibility issues during the design phase can be up to 100 times cheaper than fixing them after development.

By leveraging Figma plugins, designers can proactively identify and rectify potential barriers, ensuring that accessibility is woven into the fabric of the design from conception, rather than being an afterthought. How to perform scalability testing tools techniques and examples

Integrating Accessibility Early in the Design Process

Shifting accessibility considerations left in the design lifecycle is a must.

Rather than waiting for QA or development teams to flag issues, designers can use Figma plugins to get real-time feedback.

This iterative process allows for quick adjustments, preventing costly rework later on.

For instance, when choosing color palettes, an accessibility plugin can instantly tell you if the contrast ratios are sufficient.

When designing interactive elements, another plugin can help visualize focus order. Gherkin and its role bdd scenarios

This immediate feedback loop fosters a culture of accessible design, where it becomes an inherent part of the creative process.

It empowers designers to be the first line of defense against inaccessible experiences, leading to more robust and inclusive products.

Figma’s Plugin Ecosystem: A Game Changer for A11y

The strength of Figma lies in its vibrant community and the wealth of plugins developed to extend its functionality.

For accessibility, this means access to a diverse array of tools designed to address specific aspects of WCAG Web Content Accessibility Guidelines compliance.

These plugins range from simple color contrast checkers to complex tools that simulate various visual impairments or analyze focus order. Accessibility seo

The sheer volume of available plugins tens of thousands in the Figma Community allows designers to customize their workflow to suit their specific accessibility needs and project requirements.

It’s like having a dedicated accessibility consultant built right into your design tool, providing instant insights and recommendations.

Top Figma Plugins for Color Contrast and Readability

Color contrast and readability are foundational pillars of web accessibility, directly impacting how easily users can consume content, especially those with visual impairments, color blindness, or cognitive disabilities.

WCAG 2.1 guidelines specify minimum contrast ratios for text and graphical elements to ensure legibility.

For normal text, the minimum contrast ratio is 4.5:1, while for large text 18pt or 14pt bold and larger, it’s 3:1. Over 8% of men and 0.5% of women worldwide, approximately 300 million people, experience some form of color vision deficiency. Browserstack newsletter february 2025

Therefore, validating color choices with specialized plugins is non-negotiable for creating inclusive designs.

These plugins help designers adhere to these critical standards without manual calculation, saving time and ensuring accuracy.

A11y – Color Contrast Checker

The A11y – Color Contrast Checker is a widely acclaimed and indispensable plugin for any designer serious about accessibility. It allows you to select two layers in Figma typically text and its background and instantly check if their color contrast ratio meets WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 standards.

Key Features:
- Live Feedback: Provides immediate pass/fail results for AA and AAA compliance levels.
- Detailed Breakdown: Shows the exact contrast ratio calculated.
- Suggestions for Adjustment: If contrast fails, it offers sliders to adjust either the foreground or background color until it passes, showing the new hex codes. This is incredibly helpful for iterative design.
Why it’s essential: This plugin eliminates guesswork and manual calculations, ensuring that your text is always readable against its background, a critical factor for users with low vision or color blindness. It’s a foundational tool for adherence to WCAG 2.1 guidelines.

Stark

Stark is far more than just a contrast checker. it’s a comprehensive accessibility toolkit for Figma also available for Sketch and Adobe XD. While its free tier offers robust contrast checking, its paid features truly elevate the accessibility workflow.

Key Features Free & Paid:
- Contrast Checker: Similar to A11y, it checks contrast ratios for text, icons, and graphic elements against WCAG standards.
- Colorblind Simulator: This powerful feature allows you to simulate eight different types of color blindness directly within your Figma canvas. This helps designers understand how their designs appear to users with various color vision deficiencies. This is crucial for avoiding reliance on color alone to convey information.
- Alt-Text Generator Paid: Provides suggestions for descriptive alt-text for images, crucial for screen reader users.
- Focus Order Paid: Helps visualize and audit the tab order of interactive elements, ensuring a logical flow for keyboard navigation.
- Typography Checker Paid: Analyzes text properties like font size, line height, and letter spacing against best practices.
Why it’s essential: Stark’s integrated suite of tools makes it a powerhouse for holistic accessibility checks. The colorblind simulator, in particular, is a must for empathizing with diverse user experiences and designing truly inclusive interfaces.

Able

Able is another excellent plugin primarily focused on color contrast and ensuring an accessible color palette across your design system. It’s particularly useful for maintaining consistency and scalability in large projects.
* Comprehensive Contrast Checks: Supports WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 for both AA and AAA levels.
* Color Suggestions: Not only tells you if colors pass or fail but also suggests alternative colors that meet the contrast requirements.
* Palette Testing: Allows you to test entire color palettes against each other, identifying problematic combinations before they become widespread in your design system.
* Visualizer: Helps you see how colors interact visually, aiding in the selection of harmonious and accessible palettes. Media queries responsive

Why it’s essential: Able excels in systematic color accessibility. If you’re building a design system or working with a brand’s specific color guidelines, Able helps ensure that all color pairings are accessible from the outset, preventing accessibility debt.

Auditing and Improving User Flow for Keyboard Navigation

Keyboard navigation is a fundamental aspect of web accessibility, crucial for users who cannot use a mouse, including those with motor disabilities, temporary injuries, or those using assistive technologies like screen readers.

A logical and predictable tab order, clear focus indicators, and accessible interactive elements are essential.

Without proper keyboard navigation, complex interfaces can become entirely unusable.

Approximately 2-3% of the global population experiences significant motor impairments, making keyboard accessibility a critical design consideration.

Ensuring a smooth user flow for keyboard-only users is not just about compliance. Cloud automation

It’s about providing equitable access to digital content and functionality.

Focus Order Visualizer by Stark

While Stark was mentioned for its color capabilities, its Focus Order feature part of the paid suite is indispensable for auditing keyboard navigation.
* Visualizing Tab Order: It overlays numbered labels on your Figma canvas, indicating the sequence in which interactive elements buttons, links, form fields will be focused when a user presses the Tab key.
* Identifying Gaps and Inconsistencies: Helps pinpoint areas where the tab order is illogical, elements are skipped, or non-interactive elements are inadvertently included in the tab sequence.
* Grouped Elements Analysis: Useful for understanding how complex components e.g., modals, navigations behave in terms of focus.

Why it’s essential: Developers typically implement the focus order based on the DOM Document Object Model structure. However, designers often have the initial responsibility to define a logical flow. This plugin bridges the gap, allowing designers to foresee and rectify potential keyboard navigation issues before development even begins, saving significant development time and ensuring a smoother user experience for keyboard users.

Content Structure and Semantic Hierarchy

While not directly a Figma plugin, understanding semantic hierarchy within your design is crucial for keyboard navigation and screen reader accessibility.

Figma can visually represent this, but the underlying structure is defined in development.

Headings H1-H6: Use headings logically to convey content structure. Screen reader users often navigate by headings. In Figma, ensure your text styles reflect this hierarchy e.g., clearly distinguish H1 from H2 visually.
Lists Ordered/Unordered: Visually design lists so they are clear. Developers will then implement them with <ol> or <ul> tags, allowing screen readers to announce them correctly.
Landmarks: Design distinct regions like header, navigation, main content, footer. These correspond to HTML5 landmark roles that screen readers use for quick navigation. In Figma, you can use frames or sections to visually group these areas.
Why it’s essential: A well-defined semantic structure, though implemented in code, originates from design decisions. By designing with structure in mind, designers ensure that keyboard users and screen reader users can efficiently navigate and understand the content, leading to a more accessible and intuitive experience.

Ensuring Accessible Typography and Layout

Typography and layout are often overlooked aspects of accessibility, yet they significantly impact readability and comprehension for all users, particularly those with cognitive disabilities, dyslexia, or low vision. Robot class selenium

Beyond just color contrast, factors like font size, line height, letter spacing, and paragraph alignment contribute to the overall legibility and comfort of reading digital content.

A cluttered or poorly structured layout can be overwhelming and difficult to parse.

Data indicates that over 10% of the population worldwide has dyslexia, which is directly impacted by typographic choices.

Ensuring accessible typography and layout means optimizing for clarity and minimizing cognitive load.

Font Size and Readability

Choosing appropriate font sizes is critical. Compliance testing

While there’s no single “correct” size, WCAG 2.1 AA recommends a minimum font size of 16px or 1em for body text. However, context matters.

For elderly users or those with low vision, even larger sizes might be necessary.

Best Practices:
- Use Relative Units: Design in Figma with the understanding that developers will likely implement with relative units e.g., rem, em for scalability.
- Provide Zoom Functionality: Ensure your designs look good when zoomed in, as many users rely on browser zoom.
- Test on Different Devices: Verify readability across various screen sizes and resolutions.
- Plugins to consider: While not a specific plugin, tools like Content Reel can help populate designs with realistic text, allowing for better readability testing in context.
Why it’s essential: Small or cramped text can be a significant barrier. By prioritizing legible font sizes and scalable typography, designers enhance the experience for a broad spectrum of users, including those with visual impairments and older adults.

Line Height and Letter Spacing

Optimal line height leading and letter spacing tracking dramatically improve readability.

Line Height: Too tight, and lines merge. too loose, and text appears disconnected. A common recommendation is 1.5 times the font size for body text. WCAG 2.1 states that for blocks of text, line spacing should be at least 1.5 times the font size.
Letter Spacing: While defaults are often fine, excessively tight or loose letter spacing can hinder readability. Avoid justified text as it can create “rivers of white space” making it harder to read.
Plugins to consider: No specific Figma plugin directly audits these yet, but visual inspection during design is key. Use tools like Measure a native Figma feature or plugin to ensure consistent spacing.
Why it’s essential: Proper line height and letter spacing reduce cognitive load and visual strain, making long passages of text more approachable and digestible for everyone, including those with dyslexia or cognitive disabilities.

Paragraph Alignment and Contrast

Left-aligned text is generally considered the most readable for most languages, as it provides a consistent starting point for the eye.

Center-aligned or justified text can be harder to follow, especially for long blocks. Findelement by class in selenium

Contrast for Text: Beyond color contrast, ensure there’s sufficient visual contrast between text and its background. This includes not placing text over busy background images or patterns unless there’s a strong overlay.
Plugins to consider: Contrast a basic contrast checker can help here, as can Stark and A11y – Color Contrast Checker to ensure your text color stands out sufficiently against any background element.
Why it’s essential: Clear alignment and high visual contrast are fundamental for quick scanning and comfortable reading, improving the user experience for everyone, especially those with visual processing difficulties.

Simulating and Testing for Various Impairments

Designing for accessibility goes beyond simply checking boxes.

It requires empathy and understanding of diverse user experiences.

Simulating various impairments within your design environment allows you to step into the shoes of users with different abilities, revealing challenges you might not have otherwise considered.

This empathetic approach is crucial for identifying subtle design flaws that can become major barriers for specific user groups. According to the CDC, 1 in 4 adults in the U.S. 61 million people live with a disability.

This diverse population requires careful consideration during the design process. Using link text and partial link text in selenium

Color Blindness Simulators

As mentioned earlier, color blindness affects a significant portion of the population.

Relying solely on color to convey information e.g., “red indicates error” creates an inaccessible experience.

Stark’s Colorblind Simulator: This feature in Stark is invaluable. It offers simulations for eight common types of color blindness, including:
- Protanopia: Red-green color blindness where red cones are absent.
- Deuteranopia: Red-green color blindness where green cones are absent.
- Tritanopia: Blue-yellow color blindness rare.
- Achromatopsia: Total color blindness very rare.
- And more: Protanomaly, Deuteranomaly, Tritanomaly, Achromatomaly.
How to Use: Open the Stark plugin, select your frame or specific elements, and choose a color blindness type. Your design will instantly transform, showing you how users with that condition perceive your colors.
Benefits: This helps you identify instances where color is the only differentiator. For example, if you’re using red text for errors and green text for success messages, a colorblind simulator will show you if the distinction is lost, prompting you to add alternative cues like icons or descriptive text.

Visual Impairment Simulations Low Vision, Blurred Vision

While less common in direct Figma plugins, understanding how designs appear with low vision or blurred vision is crucial.

Simulating in Figma Manual Methods:
- Zooming In: Manually zoom in on your Figma canvas to simulate how elements look at larger magnifications. Are text and images still clear? Do layouts break?
- Reduce Opacity/Add Blur Effects: Apply a slight blur effect to a duplicated frame or reduce the opacity of elements to mimic mild visual impairment.
Browser Extensions for testing live prototypes: For a more realistic simulation on a live prototype shared from Figma, consider browser extensions like “Funkify” though not a Figma plugin directly, it’s a critical testing tool. These extensions can simulate various visual impairments, including different degrees of blur, reduced acuity, and glare.
Benefits: These simulations help designers appreciate the importance of:
- Sufficiently Large Text: Especially for headings and key information.
- Strong Contrast: Beyond just text, for all graphical elements and interactive components.
- Clear Visual Hierarchy: Ensuring key elements stand out even when visual clarity is reduced.
- Large Click Targets: Making interactive elements easier to tap or click for those with imprecise motor control.

Cognitive Overload and Distraction Testing

While not a direct simulation plugin, a well-designed interface minimizes cognitive load, which is critical for users with cognitive disabilities, ADHD, or those experiencing stress.

Key Design Principles to Consider:
- Simplicity and Clarity: Eliminate unnecessary clutter.
- Consistent Layouts: Predictable navigation and element placement.
- Clear Instructions: Concise, unambiguous language.
- Chunking Information: Break down complex information into smaller, digestible segments.
- Minimize Animation/Motion: While some motion can be helpful, excessive or unexpected animations can be distracting.
Manual Review in Figma: Designers can review their own designs from the perspective of someone easily distracted or overwhelmed. Ask:
- Is the primary call to action immediately clear?
- Are there too many competing elements on the screen?
- Is the information hierarchy easy to discern at a glance?
Benefits: Designing for cognitive accessibility leads to a more intuitive and less stressful experience for everyone. A less cluttered interface often results in higher conversion rates and reduced bounce rates.

Integrating Accessibility into Your Design System

A design system is a collection of reusable components, guided by clear standards, that can be assembled to build any number of applications. Agile advantages over waterfall

Integrating accessibility principles directly into your design system from the outset is the most efficient and scalable way to ensure consistent accessibility across all your products.

Retrofitting accessibility into existing, sprawling products is significantly more challenging and resource-intensive.

According to a Forrester report, companies with mature design systems ship products 30% faster and with higher quality.

When accessibility is a core tenet of that design system, the benefits are compounded.

Building Accessible Components from the Ground Up

Each component in your design system buttons, input fields, navigation bars, modals, etc. should be designed with accessibility in mind.

Color & Contrast: All color tokens should have accompanying accessible contrast ratios verified by plugins like Able or Stark. Define primary, secondary, and tertiary color palettes with WCAG compliance built-in. For example, specify exact hex codes for text on various background colors that pass AA/AAA.
Typography: Define accessible type scales that account for minimum font sizes, appropriate line heights, and consistent heading hierarchies.
States: Design all interactive component states hover, focus, active, disabled with clear visual indicators for accessibility. The focus state is crucial for keyboard users and must have a highly visible outline or change.
Semantic Naming: Name your components and layers in Figma in a way that suggests their semantic meaning e.g., “PrimaryButton,” “TextInput,” “MainNavigation” to aid communication with developers.
Iconography: Ensure icons are either purely decorative and thus don’t require alt-text or convey meaningful information and are accompanied by visible labels or provide clear alt-text guidance.
Why it’s essential: When developers pull a component from the design system, it should inherently be accessible. This minimizes errors, accelerates development, and ensures a consistent accessible experience across the entire product suite.

Documenting Accessibility Guidelines within the System

A design system isn’t just components. it’s also documentation. For accessibility, this documentation is critical.

WCAG Mapping: For each component, document which WCAG guidelines it addresses and how. For example, for a button component, specify how it meets 2.4.7 Focus Visible and 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value.
Usage Guidelines: Provide clear instructions on how to use components accessibly. For instance:
- “When using the TextInput component, always include a visible <label>.”
- “Ensure sufficient contrast when placing Icon components on backgrounds.”
- “For Image components, provide concise and descriptive alt-text.”
Examples: Show both accessible and inaccessible examples to illustrate common pitfalls and best practices.
Code Snippets/Accessibility Annotations: For more advanced design systems, include suggested ARIA attributes or semantic HTML structures for developers to implement. Figma plugins like Annotations can help here by allowing you to add detailed notes directly on your designs.
Why it’s essential: Clear documentation empowers designers and developers to make informed accessibility decisions. It acts as a single source of truth, reducing ambiguity and ensuring that accessibility standards are consistently applied throughout the development lifecycle.

The Role of Figma Libraries and Styles for Accessibility

Figma’s native features like Shared Libraries and Styles are powerful tools for propagating accessible design decisions.

Color Styles: Define your accessible color palette as Figma Color Styles. Any component using these styles will automatically update if a color needs adjustment to meet contrast requirements.
Text Styles: Create text styles for headings, body text, captions, etc., ensuring they meet accessibility criteria minimum size, line height, contrast. Apply these styles universally.
Component Variants: Use Figma’s Variants feature to create accessible states for components. For example, a button component could have variants for default, hover, focused, disabled, each designed with accessibility in mind.
Shared Libraries: Publish your accessible components and styles as a shared Figma Library. This ensures that all designers working on a project are using the same, pre-vetted accessible building blocks.
Why it’s essential: Leveraging Figma’s core features to enforce accessibility across your design system streamlines the workflow, minimizes errors, and ensures that every new design built from the system inherits accessibility best practices by default. It’s scalability in action.

Collaboration and Hand-off for Accessible Implementation

The best accessible designs are useless if they aren’t implemented correctly.

Effective collaboration and a clear hand-off process between designers and developers are paramount to ensuring that accessibility requirements are translated from design mockups into functional, accessible code.

Miscommunication or a lack of understanding at this stage can undo all the hard work put into the design phase.

A study by WebAIM found that 96.8% of home pages had WCAG 2 failures, highlighting a significant gap in accessible implementation.

Bridging the gap between design and development is crucial for improving this statistic.

Annotating Designs for Accessibility

Simply showing a visual design is often insufficient for conveying accessibility requirements.

Designers need to explicitly annotate their mockups with accessibility notes.

What to Annotate:
- Focus Order: Use numbered annotations to show the expected tab sequence especially for complex components or forms.
- Alt-Text: Provide suggested alt-text for meaningful images, icons, and illustrations.
- ARIA Attributes: Indicate where ARIA roles, states, or properties might be necessary e.g., aria-label for icons without visible text, aria-expanded for accordions.
- Error Handling: How errors should be communicated to screen reader users e.g., visually and via ARIA live regions.
- Interactive States: Clearly show hover, focus, active, and disabled states.
- Dynamic Content: How changes in content e.g., success messages, validation errors should be announced to screen readers.
Figma Plugins for Annotation:
- Annotations: A popular plugin for adding numbered or free-form notes directly onto your Figma frames.
- A11y Annotations: Specifically designed for accessibility notes, allowing for structured annotations related to WCAG.
Why it’s essential: Annotations serve as a detailed blueprint for developers, reducing ambiguity and ensuring that critical accessibility requirements are not overlooked during coding.

Establishing a Shared Language and Workflow

Designers and developers often come from different disciplinary backgrounds with distinct terminologies.

Establishing a shared vocabulary around accessibility is vital.

Regular Syncs: Schedule dedicated accessibility review meetings where designers walk developers through accessible designs and discuss implementation nuances.
Shared Documentation: Refer to the design system’s accessibility documentation.
Using WCAG Terminology: Both teams should be familiar with common WCAG terms e.g., contrast ratio, focus indicator, semantic HTML, ARIA.
Version Control for A11y Notes: Ensure accessibility annotations are part of the design hand-off package and are version-controlled, just like the designs themselves.
Why it’s essential: A collaborative environment where accessibility is a shared responsibility, rather than solely a developer’s or designer’s burden, leads to more robust and higher-quality accessible products.

Leveraging Developer Handoff Tools

Figma’s built-in developer hand-off features, combined with plugins, can streamline the process.

Figma Inspect Tab: Developers can inspect designs directly in Figma, getting CSS properties and asset exports. Ensure that visual accessibility choices like text sizes, color codes are accurately reflected here.
Zeplin/Storybook Integration for more advanced setups: For larger organizations, integrating Figma with tools like Zeplin or Storybook can provide an even richer hand-off experience, bridging design and development more tightly. Storybook, in particular, is excellent for showcasing accessible components in isolation, along with their code and accessibility properties.
Accessibility Checklists: Provide developers with an accessibility checklist tailored to the project, outlining key considerations for development e.g., “Is semantic HTML used?”, “Are ARIA attributes correctly implemented?”, “Is keyboard navigation fully functional?”.
Why it’s essential: A seamless hand-off reduces friction, minimizes errors, and ensures that the accessibility considerations meticulously crafted in Figma are faithfully translated into the final coded product, delivering a truly inclusive experience.

Measuring and Iterating on Accessibility Performance

Accessibility is not a one-time task but an ongoing process of continuous improvement.

Measuring accessibility performance helps identify areas for improvement and ensures that your digital products remain inclusive over time.

Neglecting this crucial step can lead to accessibility debt, where issues accumulate and become increasingly difficult to fix.

The average web page has 48.9 accessibility errors, according to WebAIM, underscoring the need for continuous vigilance.

Automated Accessibility Testing

Automated tools can quickly scan for common accessibility issues, providing a baseline for performance.

Figma Plugins Indirectly: While Figma plugins primarily focus on design-time checks contrast, focus order, the output of those checks e.g., documented accessible color palettes feeds into the automated testing phase.
Browser Extensions: Tools like Axe DevTools by Deque Systems or Lighthouse built into Chrome DevTools can audit live prototypes or developed sites. These provide a comprehensive report on WCAG compliance.
CI/CD Integration: For mature development pipelines, integrate automated accessibility checks into your Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery CI/CD workflow. This means accessibility tests run every time code is committed, catching issues early.
Limitations: Automated tools typically catch only about 30-50% of accessibility issues. They are excellent for low-hanging fruit e.g., missing alt-text, poor contrast but cannot assess cognitive flow or complex interactions.
Why it’s essential: Automated testing provides a quick, consistent, and scalable way to monitor accessibility health across your digital assets, catching regressions and ensuring a minimum level of compliance.

Manual Accessibility Audits and User Testing

Automated tools are a starting point, but manual auditing and, most importantly, user testing with people with disabilities are indispensable for comprehensive accessibility.

Keyboard-Only Navigation: Manually navigate the entire interface using only the keyboard. Can you reach all interactive elements? Is the focus indicator clear? Is the tab order logical?
Screen Reader Testing: Test with popular screen readers like NVDA Windows, free, JAWS Windows, paid, or VoiceOver macOS/iOS, built-in. Listen to how content is announced. Is it logical? Are all interactive elements announced correctly? Are instructions clear?
Zoom Testing: Use browser zoom 200% and 400% to ensure layouts remain functional and content is readable.
User Testing with Diverse Abilities: This is the gold standard. Recruit participants with various disabilities visual impairments, motor disabilities, cognitive disabilities, etc. to test your product. Observe their interactions, listen to their feedback, and learn about real-world barriers.
Why it’s essential: Manual audits and user testing reveal nuanced accessibility issues that automated tools miss, providing invaluable insights into real user experiences. This qualitative feedback is crucial for creating truly inclusive and delightful products.

Establishing an Accessibility Feedback Loop

Accessibility is a shared responsibility.

Create channels for feedback and ensure that insights from audits and user testing lead to actionable improvements.

Dedicated Accessibility Team/Champion: Designate individuals or a team responsible for driving accessibility initiatives.
Regular Reporting: Track accessibility metrics over time e.g., number of errors, compliance score to demonstrate progress.
Bug Reporting for Accessibility: Ensure accessibility issues are treated with the same priority as other bugs in your issue tracking system e.g., Jira.
Why it’s essential: An established feedback loop ensures that accessibility is a living, breathing aspect of your product development cycle, leading to sustained improvements and a truly inclusive user experience over the long term.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best Figma plugins for checking color contrast?

The best Figma plugins for checking color contrast are A11y – Color Contrast Checker, Stark, and Able. They provide instant feedback on WCAG compliance and often suggest alternative colors.

Is Stark a free Figma plugin for accessibility?

Stark offers both a free tier with robust features like contrast checking and colorblind simulation, and a paid Pro version that includes advanced tools like focus order, alt-text generation, and typography analysis.

How can Figma plugins help with WCAG compliance?

Figma plugins can help with WCAG compliance by automating checks for common issues like color contrast ratios, simulating visual impairments, visualizing focus order for keyboard navigation, and suggesting accessible alternatives for design elements.

Do I need a Figma plugin for alt-text?

Yes, a Figma plugin like Stark Pro version can assist with alt-text by providing suggestions for descriptive text for images, although the final implementation of alt-text happens in development.

Can Figma plugins simulate color blindness?

Yes, plugins like Stark offer comprehensive colorblind simulators, allowing you to preview your designs through the lens of various color vision deficiencies.

What is the purpose of checking focus order in Figma?

Checking focus order in Figma helps designers visualize and ensure a logical tab sequence for keyboard navigation, which is crucial for users who cannot use a mouse, including those with motor disabilities or screen reader users.

Are there any Figma plugins for checking font sizes for accessibility?

While there isn’t one definitive plugin solely for font size, plugins like Stark Pro version include typography checkers that analyze text properties. Designers should also manually ensure font sizes meet WCAG recommendations e.g., 16px minimum for body text.

How can I make my Figma designs accessible to screen reader users?

To make Figma designs accessible to screen reader users, ensure proper semantic hierarchy headings, lists, provide descriptive alt-text for images, design clear interactive states, and use plugins to check focus order and contrast.

Developers will then translate these into appropriate HTML/ARIA.

What is the “A11y” in A11y – Color Contrast Checker?

“A11y” is a numeronym for “accessibility,” where ‘a’ is the first letter, ‘y’ is the last, and ’11’ represents the number of letters in between.

It’s a common shorthand in the accessibility community.

Should I design with accessibility in mind from the beginning in Figma?

Yes, it is highly recommended to design with accessibility in mind from the beginning.

It’s significantly more cost-effective and efficient to address accessibility during the design phase than to fix issues after development.

How do Figma plugins help with designing for users with low vision?

Figma plugins help design for users with low vision primarily by ensuring high color contrast ratios for text and graphical elements, and by allowing designers to test designs at various zoom levels to ensure legibility.

Can Figma plugins replace manual accessibility testing?

No, Figma plugins cannot replace comprehensive manual accessibility testing.

They are excellent for catching common, quantifiable issues but cannot assess complex user flows, cognitive load, or provide the nuanced feedback that comes from testing with real users and assistive technologies.

What is the role of a design system in accessible design?

A design system integrates accessibility principles directly into reusable components, ensuring consistent accessibility across all products.

It streamlines the workflow, minimizes errors, and provides clear documentation for accessible implementation.

How do I document accessibility requirements for developers in Figma?

You can document accessibility requirements for developers in Figma by using annotation plugins like Annotations or A11y Annotations, providing clear notes on focus order, alt-text, ARIA attributes, and interactive states directly on your mockups.

What are the most common accessibility issues Figma plugins can help identify?

Figma plugins are most effective at identifying common issues such as insufficient color contrast ratios, lack of focus indicators for interactive elements, and potential issues with logical tab order.

Why is it important to simulate different types of color blindness?

It’s important to simulate different types of color blindness to ensure that information conveyed through color alone is also understandable to users with color vision deficiencies, prompting designers to add alternative visual cues like icons or text labels.

Can Figma plugins help with designing accessible forms?

Figma plugins can indirectly help with accessible forms by ensuring input field contrast, clear labels, and logical tab order.

However, comprehensive form accessibility also requires semantic HTML and ARIA attributes implemented by developers.

What should designers prioritize when focusing on accessibility in Figma?

Designers should prioritize color contrast, logical information hierarchy, clear visual indicators for interactive states especially focus, legible typography, and a sensible tab order for keyboard navigation.

Is there a Figma plugin that checks for responsive accessibility?

While no single plugin checks “responsive accessibility” holistically, designers can use Figma’s native features frames, auto layout and manually test designs across different breakpoints to ensure layouts remain functional and accessible.

How often should I check my Figma designs for accessibility?

Accessibility checks should be integrated as an ongoing part of your design process.

Use plugins frequently during component creation and layout design, and perform comprehensive audits at key milestones before developer hand-off.

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