Insights
Accessible Color and Typography Systems
Accessibility becomes scalable when color and typography live in semantic tokens with clear readability rules.
Build semantic color foundations
Hardcoding raw colors across components leads to contrast regressions and inconsistent theming. Semantic color tokens encode intent and simplify quality checks.
- Token examples: text-primary, text-secondary, surface-accent.
- Validate contrast in both light and dark themes.
- Keep status colors distinct from decorative colors.
Use a readable type scale
Typography should be optimized for scanning and hierarchy, not visual novelty alone. A stable type system improves comprehension and consistency.
- Set minimum body size for mobile readability.
- Control line length for content-heavy pages.
- Reserve all-caps for short labels and metadata.
Operationalize accessibility checks
Accessibility quality requires repeatable validation in design and engineering pipelines. Manual review alone does not scale for fast-moving products.
- Run contrast and typography checks in UI QA.
- Include accessibility snapshots in component testing.
- Document usage constraints inside component docs.