Figma formalizes semantic accessibility tokens for design systems

Tech · 4 min read

The new token category appears in the latest Figma release as 'semantic accessibility' tokens. Designers can now attach role hints, default keyboard behaviors, and reduced-motion preferences directly to component instances. Tokens are exported with a documented schema that design systems can consume to generate ARIA attributes and runtime hooks.

By keeping semantic intent in the design artifacts, teams expect fewer last-minute handoffs, and clearer audit trails showing why a component behaves a certain way. Figma's tokens also support versioning and branching, which is useful when multiple accessibility strategies are being tested across a product family.

Integration partners are already shipping plugins to convert these tokens into React props, Web Components attributes, and mobile accessibility descriptors. The consensus from the accessibility community is cautiously positive: having semantics in files helps, but success depends on engineering workflows and automated checks to enforce the mapping at runtime.