React Aria

Overview

React Aria is designed to make accessible interaction patterns easier to ship consistently. Its docs define it as a library of React Hooks that provides accessible UI primitives for your design system. It highlights advanced patterns like accessible drag-and-drop and keyboard multi-selection. Benefit: fewer bespoke, inconsistent interaction bugs that lock out keyboard and screen-reader users. Lesson: accessibility scales when behavior is centralized in reusable primitives.

Why it matters

Teams repeatedly re-implement focus management, ARIA roles, and keyboard behavior, and small mistakes can block core flows for disabled users. The benefit is reliability: fix issues once in the primitive, not in every product surface. Call to action: invest in shared accessibility infrastructure and validate components in real assistive-tech journeys.