12 Figma accessibility plugins to empower your users

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Great design is accessible to anyone. It is representative and inclusive of customers from various cultures who speak different languages and have unique demands that affect their ability to utilize your product.

When designing digital products, we often get caught up in the intricacies and forget to design for people with disabilities. 

While accessibility should be a top goal for all designers, determining where to begin can be difficult. Fortunately, various Figma plugins are available to help make your ideas more accessible.

In this design article in our Design Journal, we have compiled a list of the top Figma accessibility plugins for designing with accessibility in mind. 

Fact: Around 26% of adults in the USA and 15% of people globally suffer from a handicap that interferes with their daily lives. That is more than one billion individuals, with 54% going online.

Top Figma accessibility plugins 

Whether you are an experienced designer or just starting, these plugins will make your designs more inclusive and user-friendly.

1. Able Figma accessibility plugin

Able is an excellent Figma accessibility plugin that simplifies incorporating color contrast and color blindness into your workflow. 

When you install Able, the program automatically compares and contrasts the two layers you specify. 

Simply keep Able open and select the layers you wish to compare. You do not need to re-run or update the plugin.

2. Adee Figma accessibility tool

The Adee Comprehensive Accessibility Tool is one of the most comprehensive accessibility plugins for Figma. 

This single application allows you to generate alt-text, simulate 8 color-blind scenarios, check for contrast, and evaluate your touch target size. 

It is an all-in-one plugin that is essential if you are serious about designing for accessibility.

3. Cards for Humanity

While this plugin can not directly assist with accessibility, it can aid in inclusion design. 

Cards for Humanity is a fun and unusual Figma accessibility plugin that encourages designers to consider how to create for an individual with a particular trait and how to tailor the designs to their needs.

4. Color Blind Figma accessibility plugin

Color Blind is a helpful Figma accessibility plugin that lets you preview color schemes for folks with different levels of color blindness. 

Viewing your designs in the 8 varieties of color vision deficit allows you to see how each would change to accommodate a person with that sort of color blindness. 

All you need to do is select your design, and the plugin will clone it and generate variants with different colors. Each copy will be placed in a group identified with the color blindness kind.

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5. Color Contrast Checker

Color Contrast Checker ensures that your content is readable by people and that your designs meet WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) criteria. 

It also has color sliders, which allow you to change the colors and see how the corresponding contrast ratio changes in real-time.

6. Focus Order accessibility tool

Focus Order is a Figma accessibility tool that allows you to design for keyboards and screen readers. 

Because not everyone navigates a website with a mouse pointer, the focus state of interactive real-time interactions can be meaningful to users who use a keyboard or screen reader. 

Focus Order adds accessibility annotations to your design. These annotations may be organized into sets and kept in a single-layer group that can be turned on and off.

7. Humaaans for Figma

Humaaans for Figma is an excellent resource for inclusive design. 

This plugin integrates Pablo Stanley’s entire set of 79 illustrations into Figma. The set includes pictures of bodies and heads, clothes, mobility, and accessibility. 

It is an excellent technique for incorporating a diversity of representations into your app or website’s illustrations.

8. Stark Figma accessibility plugin

Stark is the most popular Figma accessibility plugin, with over 390,000 users. It enables you to design and test accessible software simply.

Stark includes utilities such as Contrast Checker, Focus Order, Alt-Text Annotations, Vision Simulator, and more. 

It is designed to be user-friendly, allowing you to identify and modify accessibility issues in your design before it goes into production.

9. Text Resizer accessibility tool

Allowing users to modify font size is a WCAG criterion that, when handled appropriately, is supported by all operating systems and browsers.

Regardless of vision impairment, most people alter text at least a little (up or down). 

Understanding how your design responds when this occurs is critical, and Text Resizer helps you to do just that.

10. Translator Figma accessibility plugin

If you are building a product for customers in multiple nations, language is a crucial accessibility tool consideration that should not be disregarded. 

You may develop your content in English, but you want to see how the UI looks and adapts to other languages. 

Yes! A Figma plugin such as Translator does assist! This translator immediately translates your messages into over 130 different languages.

11. A11y Figma accessibility tool

You may have noticed the word ‘A11y’ circulating on the internet. 

The abbreviation for accessibility is A11y, consistent with the many acronyms and alphanumeric phrases professionals in the localization industry use daily. 

As the name implies, the A11y Figma accessibility plugin is among the most popular. It ensures that text is legible for users by following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

The plugin allows you to examine the contrast ratio of your complete Figma artboard to see how it will appear on your website or app. 

12. Include Figma accessibility plugin

The Include Figma Plugin helps designers create more inclusive and accessible designs by encouraging them to think beyond conventional user profiles. 

It prompts designers to consider how different individuals—based on abilities, cultural backgrounds, or other factors—experience a product.

By incorporating Include into your workflow, you can design with a broader perspective, ensuring that your digital products are usable and accessible to a wide range of users. 

This plugin promotes inclusivity, making your designs more representative and functional for everyone.

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How do Figma plugins help designers ensure accessibility?

Accessibility is more than just a technological hurdle. You must understand the complexity and diversity of disabilities that affect how your clients interact with your product.  

These Figma plugins provide designers with immediate insights to address accessibility issues early on, saving time and ensuring a more inclusive design process. 

For example, a Figma accessibility plugin may show spots where font color needs excellent contrast, making reading more accessible for persons with visual impairments. 

By using these Figma accessibility tools, you can create designs that are accessible and usable for everyone, including individuals with impairments.

These tools provide designers with immediate insights into addressing accessibility issues early on, empowering them to create inclusive and user-friendly designs.

• Plugins can automatically examine designs for typical accessibility concerns, such as lack of color contrast or missing alt text.
• Some plugins enable designers to simulate how consumers with visual impairments, such as color blindness or other disabilities, perceive their designs.
• Figma Accessibility plugins guarantee that designs fulfill industry standards and legal obligations, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Pro tip: Bringing about change begins with accessible and inclusive content guidelines and standard design practices. Having rules helps you and your team produce better goods for everyone.

Conclusion

Ultimately, we are not our users. Our content and design must represent our varied, worldwide user base to deliver accessible, inclusive experiences.

Designers may and should have a better knowledge of what accessible and inclusive content design includes as they create the designed experience for actual people.

The Figma accessibility plugins for accessibility featured in this article only cover a small portion of the accessibility work needed in content design. 

Ultimately, this material is only about the tools. Getting the details correct can take some time. 

Our advice is to get started immediately and build a kit of design tools that will allow you to develop customer experiences that promote accessibility and connectivity. 

Frequently asked questions

Are Figma’s accessibility plugins simple to install and use?

Most Figma accessibility plugins are easy to install from the Figma Community. Once installed, they effortlessly integrate into your design workflow and provide tools and suggestions within the Figma interface.

What are the Figma accessibility plugins used for?

Figma accessibility plugins ensure that your designs are usable by everyone, including those with disabilities. They can check for color contrast, provide alt text, and assist you in adhering to inclusive design best practices.

How do you install Figma plugins?

• Open Figma and click the “Resources” button (four squares icon) in the top-right toolbar.
• Select the “Plugins” tab.
• Search for the desired plugin by name.
• Click “Install” next to the plugin.
• Access installed plugins via the right-click menu or the main toolbar under “Plugins.”

Who owns Figma?

Adobe acquired Figma in a $20 billion deal announced in September 2022. Before that, it was an independent design software company, but it now operates as part of Adobe’s suite of tools.