Figma launches Accessibility Audit beta for design systems

Design · 5 min read

Figma's new Accessibility Audit beta ties accessibility rules directly into component libraries and design tokens, letting teams run automated checks inside the canvas. The auditor reports color-contrast violations, missing accessible names for interactive elements, and potential keyboard navigation traps, and it links each issue to the component and variant causing it. Designers can now preview fixes at the design-system level so corrections propagate to all instances.

The tool supports custom rulepacks, enabling accessibility leads to encode organizational policies—such as minimum contrast on brand colors or mandatory skip links—into the system. It also surfaces policy drift by showing which third-party plugins or community components deviate from the organization's accessibility token set. Figma says the beta focuses on common perceptual and navigational issues first, with plans to extend checks for ARIA semantics and screen-reader simulation.

Design teams report the biggest benefit is catching systemic problems before development begins: “We fixed a foundational spacing and focus order issue in our button system that would have been expensive to rework in code,” said a product designer at a fintech startup participating in the beta. The feature doesn't replace manual testing, but it reduces repetitive accessibility debt and encourages designers to treat accessibility as a system property, not a one-off checklist.