On June 3–4, developers met in Basel for the Magnolia DevDays, where Magnolia announced a milestone in its product strategy: the new Accessible Forms are designed to significantly improve the user experience for authors and developers, making form creation and use more inclusive and straightforward.
This is more than a feature announcement – it is a strategic positioning. Authors spend most of their time in form interfaces, and their accessibility has a direct impact on productivity and inclusion. At DevDays 2025, Magnolia presented its new UI concept, which aims for WCAG 2.2 AA compliance and establishes accessibility as a non-negotiable priority by building the highest standards directly into the foundation.
The numbers speak for themselves: in a comparison with the WAVE tool, the old Vaadin-based forms showed full lists of errors, while the new forms were almost completely error-free – a monumental leap for users with assistive technologies.
Technical and strategic implications for your projects:
The new Accessible Forms are being rolled out in parallel with existing Vaadin forms – with a transition strategy, not as a forced migration. If a form definition is fully supported, the new form is displayed automatically; otherwise, the system falls back to Vaadin and shows the problems in the Definitions app.
At the same time, Magnolia has simplified the developer experience with CLI v5 and a new suite of starter headless demo projects, so that you can work more efficiently and follow best practices without additional effort. Magnolia CLI v5 is designed to make the development process faster and more efficient – whether for traditional FreeMarker-based or headless solutions.
Expert position:
Accessibility is not a compliance issue for B2B software – it is a product quality issue. Authors with disabilities or users who need assistive technologies should not be expected to put up with a hard-to-access interface as an afterthought. Here, Magnolia is moving away from superficial patches and investing in fundamental new development. That is the right approach.
Recommendation for projects:
Plan the gradual migration to Accessible Forms now – not later. Check in the Definitions app which custom fields still rely on Vaadin support. Start with new content types on the new forms. Combine this with CLI v5** for new headless projects: automating template and component generation saves valuable setup time.
Magnolia is aiming for WCAG 2.2 AA as the standard – beyond the currently required WCAG 2.1 – to prepare for future requirements. That is an investment that pays off in the long term.
As your point of contact for Magnolia projects, we help you with the strategy, migration and optimization of these new capabilities – so that your digital experiences are not only powerful, but truly accessible to everyone.
