AI and variables: Building more accessible design systems faster
December 15, 2025
When people talk about AI in design, they often picture flashy visuals or generative art. But my own lightbulb moment happened at a less glamorous place: in an effort to solve this accessibility challenge under pressure.
At UX Scotland earlier this year, I shared how AI helped me transform a messy, time-consuming process into something lean, structured, and scalable. Instead of spending weeks tweaking palettes and testing contrast, I had an accessible design system up and running in just a few days. In this article, I’ll explain how I did it and why it matters.
Source: AI and variables: Building more accessible design systems faster – zeroheight
When it comes to AI, we overindex on output and user facing features, and I think we’re somewhat asleep on workflow and process. These can be made more efficient using much language.
Here’s a great case study from Tobi Olowu on how he and his team used LLMs to help streamline the process of improving the accessibility of an existing design system.
