Accessible Design Systems With Sarah Federman

01/24/20 • 26 min

Design systems are your component library, documentation, tools, et cetera. And then there are the operations of it. So like an agile team uses agile methodology, a design system is about making your teams work better.

After Bootstrap, we all ended up building our own Bootstraps. We all like to think that we're special and the problems we're solving are specific to our company, but the reality is the way that your system is built is probably not that special. It's the way that your system is used that's special.

Everybody should be able to access your products, and you can't just make a bunch of accessible components, you have to give your users guidelines on how to use them. Sarah says that accessibility should be considered in every step of development.

Transcript

"Accessible Design Systems With Sarah Federman" Transcript

Resources

Distilling How We Think About Design Systems

Sarah Federman

Joel Hooks

Transcript

"Accessible Design Systems With Sarah Federman" Transcript

Resources

Distilling How We Think About Design Systems

Sarah Federman

Joel Hooks

Previous Episode

Segun Adebayo is the UX Engineer that built the Chakra UI design system

Segun Adebayo was turned off of web development after struggling with Wordpress' themes and plugins, and so he went straight into UI design entirely using Sketch and Figma for quite some time. It was React that brought him back into the development fold. The way React made it so easy to create components stuck with him.

Segun is still a designer at heart, but his skillset goes beyond design. If he calls himself a designer, it limits what people want from him. By calling himself, a UX Engineer Segun can create higher expectations of his skills, and people come to him for a broader range of problems.

One of the key reasons Segun started his side-project, Chakra UI, was to learn. One of his fundamental values is learning in public. Chakra UI is a passion project for Segun. It breaks his heart that most applications aren't accessible. Accessibility is one of the three core principles of Chakra UI along with composition, and being easy to style. Accessibility was one of the other key reasons for Segun starting Chakra UI. He wanted to create a design system that would make it easier for other developers to make the web accessible.

Transcript

"Why Segun Adebayo Calls Himself A UX Engineer Instead Of A Designer" Transcript

Resources

Segun Adebayo

Twitter

Joel Hooks

Next Episode

Real Community Can't Be Faked With Rosie Sherry

Rosie Sherry is both an unschooling parent and the founder of the Ministry Of Testing. There's a disproportionate number of bootstrappers who homeschool their kids, and maybe it's for the same reason why they built something themself instead of fitting into the mold, they think they can do it better.

Ministry of Testing is a company Rosie founded, officially as an online community in 2007, but then formally as a business in 2011. It's a community of software testers who geek out on testing, host conferences, have online talks, host trainings, and participate in an online community.

You can't fake a community like that. You can growth hack numbers, members, et cetera. But, you can't fake community. A strong community has to have people who care, that's what it generally comes down to. The people who lead it have to care, show that they care, and care about the industry as a whole.