Accessibility & inclusion

We believe that we should design products that all people—regardless of their physical or mental ability, education, or technical capability—can use. Here are some of our favorite resources and tools to ensure our design practices are accessible and inclusive.

Truss accessibility guide

Our Accessibility Guild created a repository of information and resources surrounding accessibility practices at Truss. View the Truss Accessibility Guide.

Standards and guidelines

For federal websites and digital products, we are required to meet Section 508 standards. Fortunately, these standards are built to align with WCAG 2.0 Level AA guidance, which many of us are already familiar with.

Resources

• 18F’s Accessibility for Teams guide: Guidance on how to embed accessibility practices across the entire team
• 18F’s Guide to Accessibility: Detailed guide on how to develop accessible products
• Plain language guide: Recommendations for how to write clearly so that our content is easy to read and understand
• Problematic language: A list of terms that could be considered racist, ableist, gendered, sexist, or cultural appropriation and thus prevent our content from being inclusive

Tools to test accessibility

• a11y Storybook add-on: Used when building out a design system using Storybook. This add-on allows for each individual component and page to be tested for accessibility.
• Chrome accessibility developer tools: A browser extension built for Chrome to inspect websites for accessibility standards
• Color contrast analyzer: Tool used to quickly analyze color contrast on UI elements