Q&A from the August 2024 USWDS monthly call

[JaymeCharles]

At the August 2024 monthly call, we answered community-submitted questions including an update on the submission and review process for component proposals. We also demoed a preview of our new USWDS Figma Design Kit as well as early working prototypes of a few USWDS Web Components.

Note: If you don’t see your question from the August call, feel free to discuss further here. Things may have changed since the call, and in those cases we’ve indicated updates with a date.

Questions from the August 2024 monthly call

• How do we notify the USWDS core team about new sites using USWDS?
• Are federal contractors considered federal employees for the purposes of filling out the USWDS survey?
• Did you ensure that the color tokens in the Figma Design Kit are 508 compliant?
• Many organizations have subscribed to SiteImprove to provide a numerical value for the accessibility of the website. One problem that our organization encounters is with accordions. The +/- icons are background images. Because the icons are considered "background," the text on the accordion has to be constantly revalidated every time the page is updated. Is there any solution in the works to fix this?
• What version and license tier of Figma are you using?
• How do you apply and work with margins in Figma?
• I am not familiar with the term “tokens.” Can you define what you mean by this term?
• Are the tokens in the USWDS Figma Design Kit correlated with a default or vanilla implementation of USWDS?
• Can I access a recording of this presentation on the USWDS site?
• Is your Storybook accessible to the public and those outside USWDS?
• There used to be a theme for Salesforce based on USWDS. Does it still exist? If so, can you provide the package URL? If not, will it be regenerated?
• Is working with Web Components just basically editing code in html?
• Has Lit been decided as the definite framework slated for release, or is there still framework exploration happening?
• Is there a storybook link for v3?
• Is there an expected release date for the USWDS Figma Design Kit?
• Have the new web components worked well with the ANDI accessibility test tool?
• Can this new USWDS 3.9 be used with uswds_base theme 3.8 in Drupal? Should I wait until uswds_base theme 3.9 released?
• We've created many Lit web components for our clients. Would you accept PRs with some of these web components?
• Have you made a decision on which icon set (e.g. FontAwesome) you will be using for your web components?

[JaymeCharles]

Q: How do we notify the USWDS core team about new sites using USWDS?
A: You can email us at uswds@gsa.gov.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: Are federal contractors considered federal employees for the purposes of filling out the USWDS survey?
A: We can only ask federal employees to participate in the survey due to PRA restrictions. If you are a contractor who has some significant feedback to share about your web team and the tools you use, please reach out to us in our public Slack channel (#uswds-public) and our UX Researcher, Jacline Contrino, will get in touch. Or you can forward the survey to your team’s federal employee.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: Did you ensure that the color tokens in the Figma Design Kit are 508 compliant?
A: Yes, as much as possible before implementation. The rest is up to you. Individual color tokens aren't compliant on their own, only in combination with another color token. The color tokens in the USWDS Figma kit will be the same that are in the design system, and should be used in the same way to determine accessible color contrast.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: Many organizations have subscribed to SiteImprove to provide a numerical value for the accessibility of the website. One problem that our organization encounters is with accordions. The +/- icons are background images. Because the icons are considered "background," the text on the accordion has to be constantly revalidated every time the page is updated. Is there any solution in the works to fix this?
A: We recognize that Accordion is frequently throwing false positive warnings for color contrast, due in part to how we're using transparency in the background. The Accordion is WCAG A/AA compliant, but these false positives force teams to conduct tedious manual testing.

We've drawn up an Issue in our GitHub repository to identify a solution to reduce these false positives. You can follow our progress directly on the Issue.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: What version and license tier of Figma are you using?
A: We generally use Figma for Government in the browser, and that doesn't have an obvious version, but in the desktop app it's currently v124.3.2. We're not yet using UI3.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: How do you apply and work with margins in Figma?
A: (addressed in the chat by Richard Henderson: “You can simulate margins in Figma with autolayout but it's not a perfect experience.” Please revise and add to this response as needed.) It depends on the component, but we've mostly been leaving margin out of the component and leaving it to autolayout settings for the container, but we're experimenting with adding top margin to Prose components, like headings, that can also be deactivated with a property.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: I am not familiar with the term “tokens.” Can you define what you mean by this term?
A: Here, we are specifically referring to USWDS tokens. You can read all about USWDS design tokens on our website.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: Are the tokens in the USWDS Figma Design Kit correlated with a default or vanilla implementation of USWDS?
A: They will be, but in these early prerelease versions, there may be some Figma token defaults that differ from the code defaults.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: Can I access a recording of this presentation on the USWDS site?
Recordings of this call and some past monthly calls are available on Digital.gov and our USWDS Monthly Calls page. When the recording is ready, it will be posted on the August Monthly Call event page.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: Is your Storybook accessible to the public and those outside USWDS?
A: Yes, you can access our Storybook. The Storybook for USWDS web components is hosted on Cloud.gov Pages and is publicly available.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: There used to be a theme for Salesforce based on USWDS. Does it still exist? If so, can you provide the package URL? If not, will it be regenerated?
A: We have a Salesforce lightning implementation listed on our site that you may find useful, but let us know if you are looking for a different tool.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: Is working with Web Components just basically editing code in html?
A: Yes, it's essentially like adding any element in HTML. Web components are just HTML elements with custom behavior.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: Has Lit been decided as the definite framework slated for release, or is there still framework exploration happening?
A: Yes, we’re sticking with Lit for now. To learn more about that choice check out the pull request for this architectural decision record.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: Is there a storybook link for v3?
A: Yes, the Storybook for USWDS v3 is hosted on Cloud.gov Pages and is publicly available.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: Is there an expected release date for the USWDS Figma Design Kit?
A: We're planning to have a Beta version available this fall, hopefully by October.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: Have the new web components worked well with the ANDI accessibility test tool?
A: We haven’t gotten that far yet. We’re only doing automated axe-core testing on the components in these early stages, but eventually they’re going to be fully audited by our accessibility experts and tested with assistive tech users.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: Can this new USWDS 3.9 be used with uswds_base theme 3.8 in Drupal? Should I wait until uswds_base theme 3.9 released?
A: We don't maintain the USWDS Drupal implementation. For specific questions, we recommend contacting Drupal’s USWDS_base implementation team. They should be able to provide guidance once we release USWDS 3.9.0.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: We've created many Lit web components for our clients. Would you accept PRs with some of these web components?
A: We are not currently accepting code contributions for USWDS web components, but please check our web-components contributing.md file for status updates. The team is getting up to speed on new technologies and deciding on architectural approaches, so we aren’t currently in a position to make good use of code developed elsewhere. However, if you’d be willing to share links to your repo, we would love to see what you’ve got. We also encourage you to share your ideas and lessons learned in our Web Components GitHub discussion board.

[JaymeCharles]

Q: Have you made a decision on which icon set (e.g. FontAwesome) you will be using for your web components?
A: Because we are aiming for USWDS web components to have feature and design parity with their v3 counterparts, we will use the same icons we're currently using in USWDS code (Material Icons) for the foreseeable future.