AFDS specification, version 1.0.0

This document specifies an Accessibility Focused Design System: what such a system contains, what each part of it means, what a component is obliged to declare about itself, how the evidence behind those declarations is recorded, and how the whole is serialised as a portable package that another organisation can read.

An AFDS exists so that an accessibility decision, its reasoning, and the evidence for it can be made once and then travel, instead of being rediscovered on every screen that needs it.

How to read this

The document is one specification in four parts. Clause numbers are global and permanent within a version. Clause 23 is clause 23 wherever it is rendered, so a citation never has to name a part or a page, and the split into pages below carries no meaning. Each clause on these pages has a stable anchor derived from its number, so #c23-2 is clause 23.2 and will stay so.

AFDS 1.0.0 is a project draft. It is not a W3C standard, not a published industry specification, and not on any standards track. The status of this document says what is normative, what is informative, and what that draft standing means.

Contents

Status of this document

Part I. Purpose and model

Part II. The component contract

Part III. The method profiles

Part IV. Serialisation

Annex A (informative). Relationship to Open Packaging Conventions