explaingit

reach/reach-ui

★ 5,977TypeScriptAudience · developerComplexity · 2/5Setup · easy

TLDR

React component library providing accessible dropdowns, dialogs, sliders, tabs, and more, built to WAI-ARIA standards so keyboard and screen reader users work correctly out of the box.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((reach-ui))
    What it does
      Accessible components
      ARIA compliance
      Keyboard navigation
    Components
      Dialogs
      Menus and combos
      Sliders and tabs
      Tooltips
    Tech
      React
      TypeScript
      Monorepo
    Audience
      React developers
      Accessibility focus
Click or tap to explore — scroll the page freely

Code map

Detail Auto

An interactive map of this repo's files and how they connect — its source is parsed live in your browser. Click Visualize to build it.

filefunction / class

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Add an accessible modal dialog to a React app without manually implementing ARIA roles, focus trapping, or keyboard handling.

USE CASE 2

Drop in a combo box, slider, or tabs component that already works correctly for keyboard-only and screen reader users.

USE CASE 3

Build accessible React forms and interactive widgets that pass automated accessibility audits without hand-coding focus management.

Tech stack

TypeScriptReactpnpmStorybook

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min
License not mentioned in the explanation, check the repository for terms.

In plain English

Reach UI is a library of accessible user interface components built for React. Accessibility here refers to making web apps usable by people who rely on screen readers, keyboard navigation, or other assistive technologies. Rather than building common interface elements like dialogs, menus, and tooltips from scratch, developers can pull in Reach UI components that already handle the underlying accessibility standards correctly. The library is built around the ARIA Practices Design Patterns, which are guidelines published by the World Wide Web Consortium describing how interactive elements on a webpage should behave for accessibility. Components like accordions, checkboxes, combo boxes, sliders, tabs, and tooltips all follow these patterns. Several components are released and ready to use, a few, such as hover cards and radio groups, are still in progress. This README is primarily aimed at people who want to contribute to the library's development rather than people who simply want to use it. It covers how to clone the repository, install dependencies, build the packages, run examples in a browser-based preview tool called Storybook, and run the automated test suite. The documentation for using the components in your own project is at a separate website linked in the README. The project is written in TypeScript and uses pnpm as its package manager for the development workflow. It is organized as a monorepo, meaning all the individual components live as separate packages within a single repository. Changing one internal package and seeing that change reflected in another requires a rebuild step, which the README notes explicitly. Reach UI suits developers building React applications who need accessible components and want to avoid implementing the detailed keyboard and screen reader behavior themselves.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Using @reach-ui/dialog in React, write a modal component that opens when a button is clicked, traps focus inside while open, and closes when the user presses Escape.
Prompt 2
Show me how to implement an accessible tabbed interface in React using @reach-ui/tabs with full keyboard arrow-key navigation.
Prompt 3
How do I install @reach-ui/combobox and build an accessible autocomplete search input in React that suggests results as the user types?
Prompt 4
Using @reach-ui/slider, build a volume control knob that works with keyboard arrow keys and announces the current value to screen readers.
Prompt 5
How do I use @reach-ui/menu-button to build an accessible dropdown menu in React that opens on click and closes on outside click or Escape?
Open on GitHub → Explain another repo

← reach on gitmyhub — every repo by this author, as a profile.

Verify against the repo before relying on details.