Accessibility law is now a design-system requirement

2025 trend round-ups flag accessibility as a legal requirement rather than a nice-to-have, driven by rules like the European Accessibility Act. For design systems, that means baking it into components and tokens, not patching it on later.

Design trend round-ups for 2025 list accessibility as a legal requirement, not just good practice, pointing to the European Accessibility Act as part of what's pushing this. For design systems specifically, that changes the job: accessibility can't live in a separate checklist someone does at the end. Contrast ratios, focus states, and semantic structure need to be built into your components and tokens from the start. If you're contributing to or learning a design system, this is your reminder that it's less flashy than AI headlines but far more durable as a skill — an accessible button component in a shared library saves every team that reuses it from redoing the work, and it's the kind of detail that shows real design-system maturity to anyone reviewing your work.

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