On June 3–4, developers gathered in Basel for 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 just a feature announcement—it is a strategic positioning. Authors spend the majority of their time with form interfaces, and their accessibility has a direct impact on productivity and inclusion. At DevDays 2025, Magnolia unveiled its new UI concept, which aims for WCAG 2.2 AA compliance and establishes accessibility as a non-negotiable priority by embedding the highest standards directly into the foundation.
The numbers speak for themselves: When compared using the WAVE tool, the old Vaadin-based forms displayed full error lists, while the new forms were nearly error-free—a monumental leap for users of assistive technologies.
Technical and strategic implications for your projects:
The new Accessible Forms are being rolled out alongside existing Vaadin forms—with a transition strategy, not as a forced migration. If a form definition is fully supported, the new form appears automatically; otherwise, the system falls back to Vaadin and displays issues in the definition app.
In parallel, Magnolia has simplified the developer experience with CLI v5 and a new suite of Starter Headless Demo projects, enabling developers to 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 Opinion:
Accessibility is not a compliance issue for B2B software—it is a product quality issue. Authors with disabilities or users who require assistive technologies should not be forced to use an interface that is difficult to access. Magnolia is moving away from superficial patches and investing in fundamental new development. This is the right approach.
Recommendation for projects:
Plan now—not later—for the gradual migration to Accessible Forms. Check the Definitions App to see which custom fields still rely on Vaadin support. Start using 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. This is an investment that pays off in the long run.
As your partner for Magnolia projects, we help you with the strategy, migration, and optimization of these new capabilities—so that your digital experiences are not only high-performing but also truly accessible to everyone.
