Component Libraries, Remediation Plans, and Your Accessibility Strategy

One of the building blocks for a sustainable accessibility strategy is a remediation plan. An accessibility remediation plan is a structured, repeatable approach that outlines how you'll test for and identify accessibility issues, decide what to fix first, implement the fixes, and validate that they actually work, so your website or app meets standards like WCAG.

If you use a component library to build and maintain your website or app, those components can play an essential role in your remediation plan.

When you’re remediating accessibility issues at scale, especially on mature websites, component libraries, and design systems are often the first place teams look for leverage. And they should.

Built right, accessible components can significantly accelerate your remediation process and help prevent future issues. Done poorly, they embed accessibility issues and propagate them across the website or app.

How Accessible Components Benefit Your Remediation Plan

They let you fix once, improve everywhere.

If your buttons, modals, accordions, and navigation patterns are genuinely accessible, remediation scales automatically. Fix the component once, redeploy, and pages become more accessible in one move.

They reduce cognitive load for teams.

Most developers and designers are not accessibility specialists, and they shouldn’t have to be. Accessible components incorporate established best practices directly into the UI, reducing the risk of errors. When accessibility is baked in by default, designers and developers create more consistent, accessible, and reliable experiences.

They support consistency, on which accessibility depends.

Consistent patterns lead to consistent behavior among assistive technologies. When a dropdown works the same way everywhere, users don’t have to relearn how your site behaves on every page. Consistency isn’t just a design principle; it’s a practical accessibility requirement.

They make accessibility easier to scale.

For large sites or platforms, manual remediation page by page doesn’t scale. Components do. A scalable component library grounded in inclusive design principles serves as the foundation for sustainable accessibility, especially when paired with documentation and usage guidance(i.e., a design system).

Inside Your Component Library: What to Watch Out For

Accessible doesn’t always mean accessible.

Many teams inherit components labeled accessible that were built years ago or copied from questionable sources on the internet. They passed basic automated tests and worked in one browser version with one screen reader model. But if they don’t meet real-world usage needs, you’re now spreading broken accessibility.

Bad components spread the error everywhere.

Let’s say a modal traps the focus, or a custom select doesn’t support keyboard-only navigation. Those issues are not confined to just one spot. Those issues show up everywhere those components live, and fixing them gets harder, not easier, because remediating them means untangling shared dependencies across multiple features.

Components can limit flexibility.

During remediation, you may uncover edge cases: unusual content, nested interactions, or complex workflows. Components that lack adaptability and scalability can force teams to use workarounds that can compromise accessibility.

For example, a native <button> is simple yet fully accessible, with built-in keyboard support, focus handling, and screen reader labels. Rebuilding it for flexibility, such as using a <div> for an icon-only design with custom behaviors, removes these accessibility features, leaving keyboard and screen reader users struggling. Achieving both flexibility and accessibility requires deliberate effort to preserve semantics, manage focus, and ensure accessible names, which is often overlooked.

Ownership gets blurry.

When a component is not accessible, who fixes it? The design system team? The product team? The vendor who built it? If ownership isn’t clear, accessibility issues can stall for months. Meanwhile, teams keep shipping the same broken component.

Making Components Work for Your Remediation Plan

Accessible components are only helpful if they’re actively maintained. That means:

Audit components like products, not assumptions.
Along with regular automated testing, conduct manual testing with keyboards, screen readers, and engage real users when possible. See 5 accessibility checks to run on every component by Hidde De Vries.
Document accessibility behaviors, not just visuals.
Focus states, keyboard interactions, and error handling should be unambiguous so that all users, including those using keyboards or assistive technology, can understand and interact with them.
Build feedback loops.
Implement user feedback loops to detect new accessibility issues. These can range from a quick chat to a survey or review. They are instrumental in providing actionable insights and exposing what's working well and what needs to be changed.
Design for flexibility.
Components should be resilient enough to accommodate real content and real-world complexity while maintaining accessibility.
Create a Design System.
A design system goes beyond a component library. It captures the rules, usage guidance, and decisions that shape those components, including accessibility requirements and testing expectations.

Thoughtfully built, well-documented, and actively maintained accessible components make accessibility scalable. When done right, remediation moves beyond isolated fixes to become a sustainable, system-level improvement providing a long-term framework your teams and organization can rely on to keep your website welcoming, compliant, functional, and truly inclusive.

Resources

A human author creates the DubBlog posts. The AI tools Gemini and ChatGPT are sometimes used to brainstorm subject ideas, generate blog post outlines, and rephrase certain portions of the content. Our marketing team carefully reviews all final drafts for accuracy and authenticity. The opinions and perspectives expressed remain the sole responsibility of the human author.