Figma adds accessibility tokens and audit panel to its design system toolkit

Design · 4 min read

Figma released a milestone update to its design system toolset today, centered on two accessibility-first features: accessibility tokens and an integrated audit panel. Accessibility tokens let teams attach semantic metadata to color, spacing, and motion tokens — for example tagging a color token as 'text-on-primary' or a motion token as 'reduced-motion-preference'. The audit panel uses those tags to run checks against a project's token variants and component states.

The audit panel flags issues like contrast failures across token themes, non-compliant focus outlines, and motion combinations that exceed reduced-motion guidelines. Rather than just reporting fails, it suggests token swaps and generates patch diffs that designers can push back to a design system repository. Figma's documentation frames the change as moving from reactive accessibility fixes to proactive, token-driven prevention.

Early adopters in enterprise design teams say the new features cut the time spent on manual accessibility reviews by roughly half and made internationalization and theme variance easier to manage. Figma also published a set of migration guidelines for existing design systems to attach accessibility metadata without breaking tokens already in use.