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Comment by seanwilson | Hacker News Reader

They're behind U.S. Web Design System (USWDS)? This is going away?

USWDS have a cool palette system where color pairs from their palette have predictable WCAG color contrast (unlike in e.g. Tailwind's default palette), but I rarely hear of projects using USWDS colors:

https://designsystem.digital.gov/design-tokens/color/overvie...

> We call the difference in grade between any two colors the magic number. Magic numbers have the following contrast implications:

> A magic number of 40+ results in WCAG 2.0 AA Large Text contrast (example: gray-90 and indigo-warm-50v).

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Under Executive Order 14151 "Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing" many links/pages were already removed from the design system https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pull/3078 https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pull/3053/files#diff-86c... (ie. inclusivecolors.com would be prohibited)

Within 60 days "“diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government" must be terminated https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/endi...

> (ie. inclusivecolors.com would be prohibited)

I didn't have "does this include words in it that might get banned?" on my checklist when hunting for a good domain name haha. The https://designsystem.digital.gov/design-tokens/color/overvie... link still mentions "inclusively".

> Within 60 days "“diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility”

Are there more details on this? So next USWDS might be stripping out references to WCAG accessibility guidelines like their color contrast advice?

That’d be something for sure. Section 508 accessibility laws are built into most federal IT contracts. DHS has an entire trusted tester certification program around it. The changes required to existing federal contracts if they do this are staggering.

https://www.dhs.gov/trusted-tester

> Sec. 3. DOGE Structure. (a) Reorganization and Renaming of the United States Digital Service. The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/esta...

in essence, USDS had the most cross functional access and was the best agency to be able to back door every other agency.

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