Auditing Design Systems for Accessibility

Course details

If a great design isn’t open and usable for everyone, how great is it? Designing accessibility into products is crucial to ensuring that you’re creating experiences that include people with disabilities. In this course, Anna E. Cook shows you how to conduct an accessibility audit on your design systems to ensure accessible experiences, helping you meet your users’ needs—while also gaining competitive advantages by building truly innovative and amazing products.

Join Anna as she covers what you need to know about an accessibility audit, and how to audit designs, client-side code, and documentation. She shows you how to document your a11y audit and make it actionable, explains key considerations for prioritizing your a11y audit and the issues it discovers, and how to share results with the consumers of your design system.

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - Auditing design systems for accessibility
02 - What you should know

1. Accessibility, Design, and Development

03 - Why accessibility matters
04 - Why accessibility matters in product design and development
05 - Who to consider in accessible design and development
06 - Digital accessibility standards

2. Design Systems and Accessibility

07 - Atomic design principles
08 - Checking an example system and design for accessibility
09 - Addressing issues at a system level
10 - Why design systems must consider accessibility

3. Setting Up a Design System Audit

11 - What is an accessibility audit
12 - Considerations for an accessibility audit
13 - What do you review in a design system accessibility audit
14 - Setting up an accessibility audit
15 - Creating an accessibility audit document

4. Auditing a Design System for Accessibility

16 - Reviewing designs for accessibility
17 - Automated testing for front-end code
18 - Manual testing for front-end code
19 - Reviewing documentation for accessibility

5. Documenting a Design System Accessibility Audit

20 - Adding issues to your original document
21 - Mapping issues to WCAG criterion
22 - Prioritizing issues by impact
23 - Grouping issues into themes

6. Acting on a Design System Accessibility Audit

24 - Sharing results with your team
25 - Sharing results with organizational leaders
26 - Prioritizing and acting on issues with your team
27 - Sharing results with design system users
28 - Using results to further motivate better research and advocacy with people who have disabilities

Conclusion

29 - There's no such thing as perfect accessibility

Auditing Design Systems for Accessibility

Authors

Anna Cook