For designers working with clients and collaborators, Figma is a must. And Figma plugins are complete game changers. As an agency that specializes in nonprofit design, we know that our brand’s missions are much more than words on a page. Figma plugins for inclusive design help us stay true to those missions. We also know that when you’re solving big societal problems, every minute matters—so collaboration and efficiency are key. If you’re a designer interested in more inclusive, collaborative, and efficient design, we’ve got the top 10 of the top Figma plugins for you.
When you’re designing on a team, integrating perspectives and feedback is a critical part of the creative process. And if you’re totally new to Figma, it’s one of the best ways to share work, ideas, and designs. Plus, you can do it all asynchronously or synchronously. It’s a surefire way to streamline design collaboration, and with the right set of plugins, you’ll be able to bypass some slow, tedious tasks. Take removing a background for example. Back in the before times (pre-plugins), if you wanted to remove a background, you could spend somewhere in the ballpark of 30 minutes on Photoshop. With new AI tools like Background Removal, you can make background-free images in a matter of seconds.
Beyond boosting efficiency, with the right plugins, you can also increase the accessibility of your designs. We’ve written about website and design accessibility, and there are tools to help you streamline your accessible design to ensure that you’re designing for people with visual impairments. But there’s more—so let’s explore 10 of the best Figma plugins for inclusive design, collaboration, and efficiency.
10 of the Best Figma Plugins for Inclusive Design, Collaboration, and Efficiency
This handy plugin allows you to fill text boxes with “dummy text.” You can choose whether you want to generate text in characters, words, sentences or paragraphs, and the quantity of each. You can even choose “auto-generate.” It’s super useful for visualizing how design will look with copy.
This magical plugin lets you convert any website into a fully editable Figma design. So, if you find a website you want to use for design inspiration, Html.to.design will copy the site design so you don’t have to start from scratch.
One of the best plugins for inclusive design and accessibility is Contrast. The plugin will scan and check pages to generate a report of all element contrast issues that might inhibit people with visual impairments from seeing a design. The handy plugin will also display passing and failing levels from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). You can even check the contrast as you work, not just at the end of your design.
To design for every user in mind, we have to make sure text is responsive and resizable for users with visual impairments. Another great Figma plugin for inclusive design is Resizer, an accessibility checker that lets you resize your text to see what the design will look like once a user sizes up or down. All text has to be adjustable as a WCAG requirement, and Resizer will demonstrate what resized text will look like for users with impairments or users who just adjust text size based on their preference.
This plugin contains a library of more than 6,000 highly useful icons. There are six styles of useful icons and they are fully vector, which means you won’t have to worry about resolution, and are able to scale, size and shape with no issue. You can simply drag an icon from the library onto the project page of your design and customize it to your liking.
The Ghost plugin quickly converts mockups and pages into “skeleton” screens which are placeholder layouts for loading screens. This is a great way to represent a loading state for a specific component or simply to deconstruct a design in order to generate a wireframe or lo-fi shape only design.
This cool plugin is a must for generating color palettes. It will generate random palettes for you of up to 10 colors. And as you go, you can lock the ones you like so they stay put when you hit generate again. When you find a color palette you’re happy with, you can save it and even add the colors to the document.
Want to silhouette or mask an image without dragging yourself over to Photoshop? Icons8 is an extremely helpful plugin that lets you mask or silhouette images right in Figma. You can select one or multiple images or multiple and the background will be removed in moments.
Unsplash is a universal go-to for free stock images. The Unsplash plugin allows you to bring in photos from the Unsplash site directly into your project within seconds, letting you populate random or filtered images into shapes or elements.
If you want to create cool and customizable illustrations, Blush is where it’s at. There are numerous styles of illustration—like expressive characters and patterns—and you also have the option to change the character’s state, expression, clothes, accessories and more.
Closing Thoughts
From designing websites to logos or landing pages, here at Constructive, we know that brands and sites need to meet the moment—and quickly. In order to design accessibly and efficiently, plugins are critical additions to boosting your design workflow and your site’s inclusivity.
We hope these plugins help, and if you’re looking to boost your own website’s design and want to learn more about all of our work, you can check it out here.
