What do design systems have to do with accessibility?
If your organization has a design system, and the components of that system are accessible (including documentation on how to use them accessibly) then your designers and engineers don’t have to redo the work to make things accessible over and over again.
In other words, a good accessible design system systemically lowers accessibility risk.
What is a design system?
I’ll write this at some point but for now, go google it.
More resources:
- Design systems are for user interfaces by Brad Frost
Parts of a design system
This is a list of resources for now.
- Design Tokens by Adobe Spectrum
Hazards and Benefits, Steps and Everything Else
- Team Models for Scaling a Design System by Nathan Curtis
- Documenting Components by Nathan Curtis
- Naming Tokens in Design Systems by Nathan Curtis
- Crafting Component API, Together by Nathan Curtis
- Improving Angular Component’s accessibility by Emma Twersky at Angular Blog
Taking your design system public
- Why and how to take your design system public by Jules Mahe at Zeroheight
Additional Resources
- The Hoof and the Horse by Ethan Marcotte
- Measuring the Impact of a Design System by Cristiano Rastelli