Start with one tool for checking designs and one for documenting accessibility requirements. Axe for Designersis a free option for scans and annotations; Include provides a guided handoff workflow. For text over photos or gradients, consider Contrast. Compare Stark and BrowserStack Accessibility Design Toolkit when your team needs a broader suite or component scanning.

This guide covers 26 Figma accessibility plugins and supporting tools, grouped by their role: audits and annotations, contrast checks, visual simulation and typography, and inclusive design. We compared the tools using their official listings and developer documentation. They are grouped by purpose, with recommendations for specific design tasks.

A contrast checker, a vision simulator, and a translation plugin solve different problems. The final category includes supporting design tools, and Font Scaler is specifically described for FigJam. None of these tools can certify the accessibility of a finished website or app.

Best Picks at a Glance

Pick	Choose it for	Cost or access	Important boundary
Stark	A broad suite of design checks	Free account; paid capabilities	Match needed features to the plan
BrowserStack	Component and layout reviews	Free entry point; plan limits need checking	Verify generated guidance during implementation
Axe for Designers	A free scanning and annotation workflow	Free; signup for auto-annotation	Design checks do not test the running product
Include	Guided accessibility handoff	Free	Annotations still need implementation
Contrast	Text over layered, image, or gradient backgrounds	Free	Element strokes are unsupported
Able	Quick checks between selected layers	Free	Pair checks do not cover every state

About pricing: Costs are included where the developer publishes clear terms. Other entries link to their current Figma listings. A free download or resource license does not establish unlimited access to connected services.

All-in-one and Audit Tools

Stark – Contrast and Accessibility AI Checker

Stark brings several design checks into one place: contrast, vision simulation, focus order, landmarks, alternative-text annotations, typography, and touch targets. That breadth makes it a sensible shortlist choice for a team that wants a shared accessibility workflow. It also offers automated scanning and remediation, but those capabilities should be evaluated against the plan you intend to buy.

Key features:

• Contrast checks with suggested alternative colors
• Focus-order, landmark, and alt-text annotations
• Vision simulation and touch-target tools

Best for: Teams comparing a broad accessibility suite with specialist plugins.

Pricing / access: Free account available; paid plans unlock additional capabilities. See Stark pricing.

Practical note: Check feature entitlement before choosing a plan. A free account does not imply unrestricted automated scanning.

Able

For everyday checks between two layers, Able is a focused option. Keep the plugin open, change your selection, and it compares the selected colors without requiring a fresh run. Its color-vision previews and copyable contrast results also make it useful when documenting a palette.

Key features:

• Contrast comparison between two selected layers
• Color-vision simulation in the preview
• Copyable ratios and scores for style documentation

Best for: Designers checking individual color combinations while working.

Practical note: A pairwise check is useful during editing; it does not replace a review of every component state.

BrowserStack Accessibility Design Toolkit

BrowserStack is worth considering when your main problem is repeated components. Its toolkit offers layout and component scanning, including contrast, target-size findings, and annotations for handoff. The official component-scanner documentation describes additional component-specific checks for buttons, inputs, links, radio buttons, and checkboxes. That is a more concrete reason to consider it than a general promise to make a whole design accessible.

Key features:

• Layout scanning across selected frames
• Component scanning with variant and state guidance
• Accessibility annotations and developer documentation

Best for: Teams reviewing a reusable component library before handoff.

Pricing / access: Free entry point available; check current access limits on BrowserStack’s toolkit page.

Practical note: Automatic ARIA suggestions express design intent. Developers still need to choose appropriate HTML and verify the implemented behavior.

Include – Accessibility Annotations

Include, created by eBay, combines guided accessibility annotations with selected checks. Its step-by-step approach covers web and native interfaces, helping you document reading order, headings, touch targets, alternative text, and other decisions that a polished mockup can leave unstated. eBay explains that teammates can review the generated layers without installing the plugin themselves.

Key features:

• Guided web and native annotation workflows
• Text contrast and touch-target checks
• Reading-order, alt-text, reflow, and text-resizing guidance
• Dev Mode implementation and testing guidance

Best for: Designers who need a structured accessibility handoff.

Pricing / access: Free, confirmed by eBay’s documentation.

Practical note: Annotations should describe the intended behavior precisely. A marked-up frame still needs implementation and testing.

Adee – Accessibility Tools

Adee groups contrast, color-vision simulation, alt-text generation, and touch-target checks. The listing describes live previews and applying color changes to the design, along with support for SVG, PNG, and JPG images in its alt-text workflow. Consider it when those four jobs match your review process; there is no need to buy a broader platform merely to check a few screens.

Key features:

• Contrast adjustments with preview and undo
• Eight color-vision simulation modes
• Alt-text generation for common image formats
• Touch-target checks

Best for: Small design reviews combining visual checks and image annotations.

Practical note: Review generated descriptions against the image’s purpose. A decorative illustration and an informative chart need different treatment.

WCAG Plugin

WCAG Plugin puts reference material beside the design decisions it informs. It provides guideline search, notation cards, and utility tokens that can be imported as Figma variables. Unlike an automated scanner, its strongest role is helping a reviewer explain which requirement matters and keep that reasoning in the file.

Key features:

• Searchable accessibility guidelines
• WCAG notation cards inside the design
• Accessibility utility tokens as variables

Best for: Reviews where the team needs shared references and documented reasoning.

Pricing / access: Free and open source, confirmed by the developer.

Practical note: Use it to support a review, not to declare conformance. A guideline card does not test an interface.

Axe for Designers

Axe for Designers is a strong free starting point for teams wanting more than a contrast ratio. Deque documents automated scans for contrast, target size, and headings, plus accessibility annotations and focus-order tools. Its annotations can include developer guidance, which helps connect a design finding to the work needed during implementation.

Key features:

• Automated design scans
• Contrast, target-size, and heading checks
• Focus-order tools and developer annotations

Best for: Teams seeking a free design-checking and annotation workflow.

Pricing / access: Free; signup required for auto-annotation, according to Deque.

Practical note: Deque says signup is required for auto-annotation. The Figma plugin and axe tools for testing a running website serve different stages.

Accessibility Assistant

Accessibility Assistant focuses on the information developers need for keyboard and screen-reader support. Its Microsoft-backed listing describes native Figma annotations for interactive elements, headings, landmarks, and images, along with review checklists. It can manage multiple annotation sets and bulk updates, giving a team a way to keep those specifications organized.

Key features:

• Native accessibility annotations
• Bulk annotation updates and multiple sets
• Keyboard and screen-reader planning checklists

Best for: Documenting navigation and semantic intent before engineering starts.

Practical note: An annotated focus sequence is a specification. Verify the actual tab sequence and focus management in the finished product.

Contrast Checkers

Contrast

Contrast is the most compelling specialist here for designs with complex backgrounds. It finds the color behind a selected layer and can scan pages for text contrast issues. Its published Smart Sampling method also evaluates image and gradient backgrounds, making it more relevant to a photographic hero or translucent card than a checker restricted to solid fills.

Key features:

• Selected-layer and page-level contrast checks
• Sampling for image and gradient backgrounds
• Live updates as colors, opacity, or blend modes change
• APCA support labeled beta

Best for: Text over imagery, gradients, or layered backgrounds.

Pricing / access: Free, described by the developer’s company.

Practical note: The listing says element strokes are unsupported. Sampled background checks also deserve a manual review of the most difficult areas.

A11y – Color Contrast Checker

A11y checks visible text across a frame and reports AA or AAA contrast results. Its color sliders let you adjust a combination and see how the ratio changes. The useful boundary is explicit: the listing supports single, fully opaque solid fills and notes background-detection issues. Choose it for straightforward UI screens, with that limitation in mind.

Key features:

• Frame-level visible-text checks
• AA and AAA feedback
• Color sliders with changing contrast ratios

Best for: Reviewing text in interfaces built from opaque solid colors.

Practical note: Do not use its result as evidence for text over photos, gradients, or translucent layers.

Visual Contrast

Visual Contrast uses APCA and includes a text preview, contrast information for different content, and suggested colors. That makes it an option for exploring perceptual contrast alongside typography decisions. Keep the assessment separate from the WCAG 2.x contrast ratios used in a WCAG 2.2 review.

Key features:

• APCA-based contrast assessment
• Text preview
• Suggested replacement colors

Best for: An additional perceptual-contrast review alongside WCAG 2.x checks.

Practical note: APCA results are not interchangeable with WCAG 2.2 contrast ratios. The plugin’s reference to WCAG 3.0 should not be read as a conformance claim.

Color Contrast

Color Contrast follows a small, direct workflow: select one or two layers, inspect their contrast, change the colors, and apply the change to the artwork. Consider it for adjusting a particular foreground/background combination.

Key features:

• One- or two-layer selection
• WCAG-oriented contrast checking
• Apply color changes to the design

Best for: Adjusting a specific color pair without a wider audit workflow.

Practical note: The description does not establish support for every blend, image, or gradient scenario. Check the actual background before trusting the result.

Contrast Checker

This Contrast Checker is the entry with plugin ID 1195158716202754858. Its description references WCAG text-contrast criteria 1.4.3 and 1.4.6 and reports results for normal and large text. It provides a color-selection workflow, rather than documented whole-file scanning.

Key features:

• Color selection and confirmation
• Normal- and large-text results
• References to minimum and enhanced text contrast

Best for: Checking individual text-color combinations.

Practical note: The listing describes Level A as a poor contrast result. WCAG text-contrast thresholds belong to AA and AAA criteria; use the W3C requirements when interpreting its labels.

Color Contrast Checker WCAG 2.1

Color Contrast Checker WCAG 2.1 describes a straightforward foreground/background comparison. Its brief listing offers little evidence for broader scanning or remediation features, so it belongs on the shortlist for a small, specific task: checking the contrast between two colors.

Key features:

• Foreground/background comparison
• Focused color-contrast workflow

Best for: A basic comparison when you already know which colors need checking.

Practical note: The WCAG 2.1 name does not establish coverage of every WCAG 2.1 criterion. Treat it as a contrast tool.

Contrast Checker

The second Contrast Checker, plugin ID 1394005938449547804, is from Pixelait. It describes checking a selected layer against its background and is explicitly presented as free. Keeping the IDs separate matters: these are different plugins with the same display name, not two links to the same product.

Key features:

• Selected-layer/background contrast analysis
• Explicitly advertised free use

Best for: Designers evaluating another option for individual layer checks.

Pricing / access: Free, stated in the developer’s Figma listing.

Practical note: Its marketing language includes broad compliance promises. A contrast check alone cannot establish that a website is accessible.

Use Contrast

Use Contrast checks a selected text layer or object and provides controls for adjusting colors. It is most suitable for simple color combinations because the developer lists three unsupported cases: gradients, transparency, and object strokes. Those exclusions are useful when deciding whether to use it on a particular component.

Key features:

• Checks selected text or objects
• Color adjustment controls
• Published limitations for complex fills and strokes

Best for: Checking simple, opaque color combinations.

Practical note: Use another method for gradients, transparent overlays, and strokes. Do not infer that an unchecked case passes.

Vision Simulation, Type, and Reference

Color Blind

Color Blind creates copies of a selection for eight color-vision deficiency simulations and labels the resulting groups. That output is useful in a critique: compare whether chart series, warnings, or selected states remain distinguishable when their colors change.

Key features:

• Eight color-vision simulation types
• Cloned, labeled versions of selected content
• Choose which simulations to generate

Best for: Reviewing color-dependent meaning in UI and data visualization.

Practical note: The listing says image layers are not converted. A simulation of vector fills does not tell you how an embedded photograph is handled.

Accessibility Simulator

Accessibility Simulator extends the discussion beyond color-vision differences. The developer lists light sensitivity, vision loss, and red–green and blue–yellow color-blindness simulations. Use it to question a layout’s visual assumptions, especially when important controls or labels depend on subtle visual differences.

Key features:

• Light-sensitivity simulation
• Vision-loss simulation modes
• Red–green and blue–yellow color-vision simulations

Best for: Visual reviews that need more than a palette check.

Practical note: The developer warns that large files can run slowly and suggests copying a section to a new page. Start with representative screens.

Low Vision

Low Vision lets you select a frame or element, then choose a field-of-vision impairment and visual-acuity range. Its role is exploratory: it gives a review team another way to examine how the placement and visibility of important information might need attention.

Key features:

• Frame or element selection
• Field-of-vision settings
• Visual-acuity range controls

Best for: Discussing visual hierarchy and the visibility of important content.

Practical note: Simulations cannot represent every person’s experience. Treat the preview as a design prompt and include user research where possible.

Text Resizer

Text Resizer is useful when a layout looks fine at its original font size but may struggle with larger text. You choose the current base size for 1rem, enter a new base size, and clone the selection with resized text. Its developer recommends Auto Layout for the best results.

Key features:

• Base-font-size conversion using rem
• Cloned selections with resized text
• Works on selections containing text

Best for: Exploring larger-text layouts before implementation.

Practical note: Resizing a Figma frame does not test browser zoom, reflow, or an app’s actual text-scaling behavior. Verify those in the built product.

Vision Simulator

Vision Simulator describes a color-perception simulation workflow inside Figma. Its public description is much shorter than those of the other simulators here, with no detailed mode list or algorithm explanation. Keep it as an option to evaluate, rather than assuming that it covers the same conditions as Color Blind or Low Vision.

Key features:

• Color-perception simulation described by the developer
• An in-editor visual-review workflow

Best for: Exploratory reviews after confirming the available simulation modes.

Practical note: The documented feature set is limited. Check its actual controls before making it your team’s standard simulator.

Font Scaler

Font Scaler is described specifically as a way to enlarge or shrink text nodes in FigJam. It can make workshop notes easier to read or help vary text size on a board. That is a useful supporting task, but it is different from reviewing how a Figma Design interface responds to larger text.

Key features:

• Scale FigJam text nodes up or down
• Focused typography utility

Best for: Improving the readability of FigJam workshop material.

Practical note: For interface text-resizing exploration, Text Resizer is the closer match. Font Scaler is not documented as a WCAG checker.

Inclusive Design and Localization

Cards for Humanity

Cards for Humanity starts an inclusive-design conversation by dealing a person card and a trait card. The combined scenario asks a team to consider how its product could meet that person’s needs. It is useful before a layout has hardened into a final proposal, when assumptions are still easy to challenge.

Key features:

• Person-and-trait scenario cards
• Prompts for inclusive-design discussions

Best for: Workshops and early product discussions.

Practical note: A generated scenario is a conversation starter. It does not replace research with people who have the needs being discussed.

Humaaans for Figma

Humaaans for Figma brings Pablo Stanley’s mix-and-match illustration library into the editor. It provides pre-made people and parts you can combine into new scenes. Keep it in the supporting-tools category: representation in artwork can inform a design’s tone, but illustrations do not check contrast, navigation, or assistive-technology support.

Key features:

• Premade people illustrations
• Mix-and-match illustration components

Best for: Creating people-focused illustrations for prototypes and content.

Pricing / access: Free Community listing; the underlying illustration library is CC0 for personal and commercial use.

Practical note: The underlying Humaaans library is CC0. Decide whether each finished illustration is informative or decorative when specifying its text alternative.

Translator

Translator helps you put different languages into the design before development. Its listing describes more than 130 languages, translating selected text or whole designs, mixed-style text, and FigJam tables. The practical value is seeing where real language changes strain a component, rather than treating the original-language mockup as the only layout that matters.

Key features:

• More than 130 languages listed
• Translate text selections, groups, and frames
• Mixed text styles and FigJam table support

Best for: Exploring localization layouts and multilingual prototypes.

Pricing / access: The Figma listing shows a $9/month in-app subscription. Currency denomination and any trial limits are not specified.

Practical note: Have a fluent reviewer check important copy. Machine translation is not approval of terminology, meaning, or reading direction.

Design Feedback

Design Feedback provides structured comments on a selected UI frame, including visual hierarchy, usability, responsiveness, and accessibility. It belongs in a critique workflow, where suggestions can help identify questions for a designer to investigate. Its description does not establish a transparent WCAG rule set or validated coverage.

Key features:

• Feedback on selected UI frames
• Comments on hierarchy, usability, and responsiveness
• Accessibility included among review topics

Best for: Generating a second set of questions during a design critique.

Practical note: Investigate suggestions before applying them. General design feedback cannot replace a documented accessibility review.

How to choose a Figma accessibility plugin

Start with the gap in your current review process. If you already check color pairs but struggle to communicate reading order, headings, or image descriptions, an annotation workflow such as Include will add more value than another contrast checker. If you want multiple checks together, compare Axe for Designers, Stark, and BrowserStack against the components and screens your team actually uses.

For contrast, inspect the background assumptions. A11y and Use Contrast document limits that matter for photos, gradients, or transparency. Contrast describes sampling for complex backgrounds. Whichever tool you choose, check representative text, component states, and the actual background; a passing result for one selection does not cover the rest of a page.

Use simulations to ask better questions about the design. If status is communicated only through red and green, add another cue such as text, shape, or an icon with a label. Test larger text and localization separately. Then carry the decisions into development and review the implemented interface with keyboard navigation, appropriate assistive technologies, and users where possible.

Frequently asked questions

Do you need a plugin to check contrast in Figma?

No. Figma includes a contrast checker in its color picker. Its official documentation explains foreground/background ratios, text and graphics categories, and AA/AAA settings. Add a plugin when you need a documented capability beyond that workflow, such as page scanning, simulation, or accessibility annotations.

What contrast ratio should you check for WCAG 2.2?

For the text covered by WCAG 2.2’s minimum contrast criterion, Level AA requires at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text, subject to the criterion’s exceptions. Large text is at least 18pt, or 14pt bold; approximately 24 CSS pixels or 18.7 CSS pixels bold. Check the W3C explanation when interpreting a tool’s result. A text-contrast pass is only one part of an accessibility review.

Can APCA replace WCAG 2.2 contrast checks?

No. For a WCAG 2.2 review, assess its specified contrast requirements. APCA can provide additional perceptual information, but its values are not the same measurements as WCAG 2.x contrast ratios. WCAG 3.0 remains a draft; do not treat a plugin’s WCAG 3.0 label as proof of conformance.

Can a Figma plugin prove that a website is accessible?

No. A design file does not establish how the finished interface exposes semantics, handles keyboard interaction, or behaves with assistive technology. Use plugin findings to inform design and handoff, then test the implementation. Similarly, a resized mockup cannot establish that a website meets text-resizing or reflow requirements.

Which tools should you start with?

Axe for Designers is a useful first option for a free scan-and-annotate workflow. Choose Include when the recurring problem is documenting what developers need to implement. For visual checks over images or gradients, Contrast has a better documented fit than tools restricted to opaque fills.

Start with Axe for Designers for checks, and add Include if you need a guided handoff. Add a specialist only when it solves a documented gap, such as complex-background contrast or text resizing. Review the findings, fix shared components where appropriate, and carry the decisions into implementation. That follow-through matters more than installing every plugin in the list.