eBay’s newly open-sourced tool, Include, was built to make accessibility annotation easy, smooth, and simple, to ensure that accessibility is a core part of the design experience, rather than something crammed in later.
The plugin was developed by members of the accessibility and design teams at eBay and is released for public use on Figma.
The plugin can help an app designer select a frame for annotations, and then present a list of steps to ensure that the design meets accessibility standards. For instance, Include will create a list of images used in a mockup. The designer can mark an image as informative, and the plugin will prompt them to include alt text, which allows screen readers to describe the image.
There are also many additions to the plugin. One of them makes a copy of the design with text enlarged to 200%, so the designer can easily see where text may overflow, or where the design may break, which shows how the app might look for those who enlarge text on their devices.
Other additions include functionalities for color contrast accessibility checks, methods for creating commonly-used layers and frames within the Figma document, and utility functions for working with Figma frames and strings.
Additional details on the project are available here.
