Figma Make Cuts Design Time 20% in RCT — Week 33 Design Systems

The University of Minnesota reports a 90% year-over-year reduction in web accessibility errors across a large, decentralized digital estate. Instead of handing departments an impossible global backlog, it produced small remediation lists with clear priorities and local owners. Its 3Rs framework first removes obsolete or duplicated material, then revises valuable content, and finally teaches staff to create it right the first time. The central accessibility office supplies infrastructure, reporting, training, and oversight while a network of departmental liaisons owns delivery. The result treats accessibility as continuous operations rather than a one-time cleanup campaign.

Accessibility delivery can be delegated, but TetraLogical argues that board accountability for accessibility risk cannot. Inaccessible services affect revenue, support cost, procurement, employee productivity, transformation budgets, reputation, legal exposure, and even acquisitions, so the subject belongs on an ordinary risk register. Directors need evidence of obligations, accountable owners, critical journeys, controls, complaint trends, and accumulated accessibility debt rather than implementation-level WCAG detail. Typical controls include procurement requirements, launch testing, conformance evidence, remediation plans, and executive ownership. The closing test is practical: if the board could not confidently explain the organization's position to customers, employees, regulators, investors, or media, governance is not mature.

A monolithic token file slows every build, increases merge conflicts, and makes a small component change feel like a system-wide risk review. This workflow splits button, card, modal, and other component tokens into separate sources, then uses Style Dictionary to emit matching CSS and Sass files. Central ownership favors a shared token tree; distributed component teams may colocate token files with code while keeping base and semantic tokens central. Component names should prefix variables, component values should reference semantic rather than base tokens, and shared values should move up a layer. Optional cascade-layer metadata lets each generated component file arrive in its intended @layer without hand-written output.