Figma are in a position to be thought-leaders and set positive examples for both seasoned and new designers to the field, and have talked the talk with articles like this one on Accessibility & Inclusively — Learn with Figma
The article has the call to action “If you aren’t approaching design with intent to be as inclusive as possible, it’s time to reconsider.”
It’s easy to point things out rather than solve them, but I’d love to see Figma falling into fewer known and obvious accessibility traps with their new feature releases, such as the recent navigation redesign which features very difficult to read 9px low-contrast text, and buttons (such as “share” or “new” in the project view) that don’t have visible focus states, or the notifications dropdown which doesn’t appear to be navigatable with a keyboard at all.
By rolling out features like this, you’re saying to the 60% of the industry using Figma (best guess) that inclusive design is hard, sometimes too hard, and it’s OK to leave it until later, you can be successful regardless.
It’s a hard thing, and technical debt is real and painful, but I’ll just reiterate the above article and say, maybe it’s time to reconsider 🙂 This isn’t a specific fix or feature, but something I’d love to see as part of the acceptance criteria for any feature or change at Figma going forward.
Thanks!
