Karen Hawkins

Design tokens are all the rage. They exist to efficiently power consistent experiences. It truly is a powerful thing to be able to deliver platform-agnostic consistent experiences, or to quickly update a style that propagates via inheritance, even across nested design systems. The resultant consistency and efficiency are the main drivers for their recent popularity.

But, have you thought about harnessing that power of design tokens to ensure these experiences are also accessible? Well, it’s true. Design tokens work at the base property level, at the level where the tiniest design decisions are made, for instance colour, padding, or font weight. How these micro-decisions work together, or rather don’t work well together, can influence whether the experience is accessible or not.

In this talk you’ll learn how design tokens can significantly influence the accessibility of your designs, and you’ll learn some practical ways to apply design tokens to do just that.