When building modern digital products, accessibility should never be an afterthought—and design systems play a critical role in making accessibility scalable, consistent, and effective.

1. Accessibility Starts with Inclusive Mindsets

Accessibility isn't just about color contrast and screen readers—it's about building for real people with diverse needs. A strong design system reflects this by embedding inclusive practices from the start. Teams should adopt a mindset of empathy, curiosity, and continuous improvement.

2. Design Systems Make Accessibility Scalable

One of the greatest strengths of design systems is their ability to scale standards across an entire product ecosystem. When accessibility guidelines and patterns are built into tokens, components, and documentation, the entire team benefits. You reduce rework, ensure consistency, and make accessible design the default.

3. Documentation Is Everything

Whether you're defining accessible color tokens or outlining how to create keyboard-navigable components, your design system documentation should guide both designers and developers clearly and thoroughly.

4. Bake Accessibility into Tokens and Components

Your design tokens can do more than define colors—they can define accessible color pairings, spacing for touch targets, and type scales for readability. Similarly, your components should be prebuilt with accessibility baked in: proper ARIA roles, keyboard support, focus states, and more. This ensures every product built with your design system is accessible by default.

5. Use Real Examples to Drive Adoption

Teams often struggle to implement accessibility because it feels abstract. The solution? Show how it works—like accessible forms, modals, and nav menus—to demonstrate best practices directly in the design system documentation. This makes it easier for teams to understand and apply.

6. Accessibility Is a Shared Responsibility

Accessibility is not just the developer’s job, or the designer’s job—it’s everyone’s job. A good design system clarifies what each role is responsible for and supports collaboration across disciplines.

7. Don't Wait for a Redesign

Accessibility improvements don’t have to wait for a full redesign or refactor. Start small. Fix token naming. Update a button component. Improve documentation. A great design system evolves, and accessibility can improve with every iteration.

Looking to build or improve your own accessible design system? Start with small wins, keep learning, and remember: it’s about progress, not perfection.

Want to dive deeper?
Join us at Into Design Systems Conference 2025 (May 28–30, online) for expert-led sessions on design systems, accessibility, theming, design tokens, and much more.
👉 Secure your spot