Enhancing Accessibility: Using the U.S. Web Design System

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, almost 1 in 4 Americans lives with a disability. These citizens face unique challenges when accessing information and services through digital platforms. Luckily, there is a range of methods organizations can use to make websites more inclusive — including high-contrast color palettes, using plain language, and structuring content for screen reader compatibility. It’s crucial that government websites open their services to as many people as possible — as such, meeting a broad range of accessibility requirements is legally mandated for government websites and federal agencies. However, ensuring that all their web properties are fully compliant with accessibility needs is a multi-faceted, complex, and time-consuming challenge for public sector organizations.

How can the U.S. Web Design System be used to enhance accessibility?

One solution offered by the U.S. General Service Administration (GSA) is the U.S. Web Design Design System (USWDS). The USWDS is a regularly maintained design system, including components, design tokens, and design principles aimed at making it easier to build and maintain fully accessible digital services. Using the components in the design system saves designers from tackling the same basic design questions over and over again — and ensures the foundations of sites are fully set up for accessibility. 

Although most government agencies have at least heard of USWDS, many of our clients come to us to understand how best to use USWDS in their web designs, and to propel them towards stronger accessibility. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the fundamentals of USWDS: how it supports accessibility, compliance, and responsive design, as well as common challenges and pitfalls to be mindful of along the way. If you’re looking for customized support in using USWDS for accessible digital services, we’d love to learn more about your project.

Understanding the U.S. Web Design System

Design systems in general are a set of standards and building blocks that organizations use to build high-quality, consistent websites, while avoiding repetitive design steps. The USWDS is a design system specifically built by and for government website administrators. Although any organization can use the USWDS, it is targeted toward building federal websites that ensure seamless user experiences and accessibility compliance as standard.

The USWDS was designed by 18F and the U.S. Digital Service in 2015, and is currently maintained and updated by the GSA's Technology Transformation Services. It includes a number of different tools, standards, and assets to help with efficient and accessible website design:

• Design principles: Guidelines on how to approach and consider website design, such as focusing on site visitors’ needs first and building trust — with practical actions to promote these ideas
• Design tokens: Predefined palettes of style elements, including colors, spacing, fonts, and opacity
• Components: Blocks of code for common user interface elements, like buttons, banners, and icons, as well as usability guidelines on how and where to use them within your site
• Patterns: Guidelines for common user interactions, such as building forms and language selectors
• Implementations: Applications to help integrate USWDS into your existing content management system (CMS) — though these are community-built, and not tested and endorsed by the USWDS team

USWDS and federal compliance: meeting accessibility standards

Accessibility compliance can be a complex field to navigate, especially for public sector entities. Relevant regulations, laws, and rules are constantly evolving, and which regulations apply depends on your organization’s sector, location, and funding. 

State and local governments are subject to compliance regulations within the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). A final rule was added to ADA in April 2024, stipulating that all state and local governments’ web content and mobile apps need to meet the standards of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Version 2.1. 

U.S. federal agencies and entities who receive U.S. federal funding are subject to Section 508, which uses WCAG 2.0 as its standard.  A new law was proposed in 2023 requiring federal agencies and departments to appoint “Section 508 compliance officers” who are responsible for meeting the relevant accessibility requirements. 

What are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)? 

The WCAG is a set of guidelines and technical standards that aim to improve web accessibility. They’re currently used as the basis for accessibility legislation in over 40 countries. 

Key guidelines include:

• Offer alt text for all non-text content, including videos and images
• Include captions, audio description, and sign language on video content
• Allow text to be resized without making the website less easy to navigate
• Use high-contrast color schemes for visually impaired site visitors
• Use plain language to make content accessible to site visitors of all reading levels
• Make content accessible to screen readers through consistent use of meta tags
• Make content navigable by keyboard

Accessibility is a broad topic, with many different facets to consider. A General Service Administration report from 2023 found that many agencies were failing to uphold the full range of accessibility guidelines: less than 30% of the most viewed intranet and internet pages, documents and videos surveyed were fully compliant with Section 508.  

Where USWDS comes in

The components and design elements within USWDS are accessible as standard. Each asset is Section 508 compliant, meaning whenever you need to add a new element to your website you can access code and design tokens that have accessibility built in.

USWDS is also maintained by the General Service Administration — which means that as U.S. legislation around accessibility guidelines develops, USWDS is updated to stay relevant to the latest compliance requirements. 

Beyond compliance: key strategic benefits of USWDS

Access to fully accessible design components “out of the box” is a huge boon for public sector entities — but USWDS also offers several other key advantages:

Lower redundancy

Without predefined assets, designers and developers have to go through the repetitive steps of building the same basic blocks and assigning the same values to design elements for each new website project. Having commonly-used components ready to go reduces redundancy and saves time. 

Web performance

Web performance typically refers to the speed at which web pages load; sites with good performance load fast and are viewable on a range of different devices. Optimal web performance is an important part of truly accessible web design. It ensures that the broadest range of citizens possible are able to access digital services, including those using older devices and those in remote areas with low internet coverage. USWDS components are designed with performance in mind, and the design principles include guidelines on how best to track and optimize performance. 

Consistency and credibility

As Jack Graham, a Senior UX Designer & Web Architect for Palantir, says, “Credibility is adjacent to accessibility” — a well-designed website builds trust, making site visitors more likely view government sites as accurate, authentic, and reliable. Not only does USWDS encompass clean, professional design and UX best practices — it’s already used by many government agencies. Using the same navigational components as other agencies creates a consistent federal interface and boosts the authority and credibility of individual agencies. 

Less bureaucracy

Procurement and approval processes for new designs, workflows, and guidelines within government agencies can be long and complex. Using the design system built and maintained by the GSA can alleviate barriers to adoption and approval because the framework has already been vetted, reducing the need for extensive reviews and approvals. 

Documentation

As you might expect for tools built around accessibility, the USWDS itself is easy to use and offers clear and thorough documentation. “USWDS is a breath of fresh air when it comes to documentation,” according to Ashley Cyborski, a Senior UX Designer and Web Architect at Palantir. “It’s so well organized — you can tell they applied their principles to their own site.” 

Common challenges and pitfalls of USWDS

USWDS offers many advantages to agencies — but it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s designed to be agnostic and widely applicable, leading to generic designs. Customization is required to meet your agency’s specific requirements. 

USWDS is easy to get started with — but for complex government websites, you’ll still have to work with experts to create sites that meet your agency’s needs. “An individual could download the design system, put together some HTML, and they’d have a site,” Ashley Cyborski explains. “But for organizations, you have to figure out how to translate it from what it is into the functional, feature-rich CMS you’re looking for.” 

When it comes to building custom websites with USWDS, there are several challenges to watch out for: 

• Maintaining accessibility: The components and tokens are accessible as standard — but customizations are inevitable, and it’s important to thoroughly assess if your changes are compromising compliance.
• Implementation: “Even to implement it from an HTML perspective, you require some knowledge of HTML best practices, markup best practices — both in terms of accessibility and functionality,” Ashley highlights.
• Integration: Although USWDS maintains a list of open source applications for integrating the design system into your existing stack, these applications aren’t tested or maintained by the GSA. Additionally, they’ll be built by other organizations, with their specific needs in mind — your developers will need to assess if they’re suitable for your agency’s specific needs.
• Expertise: Beyond implementation, full accessibility compliance requires other targeted expertise. For instance, your internet and intranet pages won’t be fully compliant if the text doesn’t meet plain language standards — working with content experts is an important piece of the puzzle for building fully accessible digital services. 

Although these challenges can be navigated alone, working with an agency removes many of these barriers. At Palantir, we have over 20 years of experience building accessible, responsive sites for government and public sector agencies. Our teams of designers, developers, and content experts have extensive experience with the USWDS, and with using its tools and principles to build fully compliant implementations for a range of public sector clients. If you’d like to learn more about how we build accessible, complex digital services, get in touch. 

The ongoing journey towards inclusivity

We believe all organizations should embrace accessibility standards — but it’s especially crucial for government and public sector entities. When your organization provides a digital interface between citizens and their government, it’s critical that your services are accessible to as broad a range of visitors as possible. The USWDS offers a robust framework for building sites that are well-designed, accessible, and compliant with regulatory standards. 

Accessibility standards are constantly evolving. In the U.S. alone, new standards have been published for state and local governments and proposed for federal agencies within the past year. As it’s maintained by the GSA, USWDS will be regularly updated to stay relevant to the latest regulations. But individual agencies will have to make sure they’re using the latest version of USWDS, and that their custom implementations remain compliant. If you’re looking to build sites that are resilient to future developments in accessibility regulations, find out how we can apply our expertise to your digital solutions.