About the Ontario Design System

About

The Ontario Design System is the design system for the Government of Ontario. It sets out the design and front-end coding standards for building websites and applications.

The design system provides designers with a prototyping kit to design and test new services, as well as ready-to-use code that developers can implement in their projects.

The Ontario Design System was created in 2019.

Read our release notes to learn about current and past versions.

Mission

The design system ensures that government websites and applications:

• are accessible
• look consistent
• align with the Ontario brand

Our goal is to help digital teams save time, avoid duplication of work and deliver high-quality user experiences across all of government.

Government standard

The Ontario Design System Standard is a standard under the Government of Ontario Digital and Data Standards. It came into effect in March 2022.

This means that any ministry, agency, vendor or third-party service provider who is hired to create digital services for the Ontario government must use the Ontario Design System.

The design system incorporates the Government of Ontario visual identity system. It also complies with the requirements under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005.

Design principles

The Ontario Design System design principles are a set of guidelines to help you make decisions throughout the design process.

They are value statements that describe the most important goals that a product should deliver for users.

The purpose of the principles is to ensure that teams across the government are designing and developing products through a shared approach.

Testing

The Ontario Design System team tests each component to ensure it follows our design principles and meets established technical and accessibility standards.

The design system is used to create accessible prototypes to test with the public. Areas like our experience design lab help us create user centric testing methods to gain insights on pain points and optimized experiences for users.

Do your own testing

Every digital product is unique. Do your own usability and accessibility testing to ensure that your product works for the specific scenarios and use cases you need to support.