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What is Radix UI? A Guide to Accessible React Components

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    What is Radix UI? A Guide to Accessible React Components

    When building modern web applications, developers often struggle with two common challenges:

    1. Accessibility (a11y), making sure components are usable by everyone.
    2. Consistency, building UI without reinventing the wheel for common elements like modals, tooltips, or tabs.

    That’s where Radix UI comes in.

    What is Radix UI?

    Radix UI is a headless component library for React.
    Instead of giving you pre-styled components, it provides accessible, unstyled building blocks, so you can design them however you want while keeping accessibility baked in by default.

    Examples of components include:

    • Tabs
    • Dropdowns
    • Modals (Dialogs)
    • Tooltips
    • Hover cards
    • Popovers

    All of these follow WAI-ARIA accessibility standards, keyboard navigation, and screen reader compatibility out of the box.

    Why use Radix UI?

    • Accessibility First → Every component is tested for WCAG and ARIA compliance.
    • Unstyled by Design → You have full control with CSS, Tailwind, or any styling system.
    • Composable → Components are modular and easy to integrate into larger UIs.
    • Production Ready → Used by companies like Vercel, Linear, and WorkOS.
    • TypeScript Support → Strongly typed for a smoother developer experience.

    Radix UI vs Other UI Libraries

    • Radix UI: Accessibility + headless, you bring your own styles.
    • Material UI / Chakra UI: Pre-styled components, faster start but harder to customize deeply.
    • Headless UI (by Tailwind): Similar idea, but fewer components than Radix.

    If you want design freedom + accessibility, Radix UI is the sweet spot.

    When should you use Radix UI?

    Choose Radix UI if:

    • You need accessible components but don’t want a locked-in design system.
    • You’re using Tailwind CSS or a custom design system.
    • You want flexibility and control over your branding and styles.

    Conclusion

    Radix UI makes it easy to build accessible, flexible, and consistent UIs in React without sacrificing design freedom. It’s perfect for developers who want both a11y guarantees and styling freedom.

    👉 You can see Radix UI in action on my project Dashfolio Movies, where I used it for tabs, tooltips, and dialogs in a multilingual movie dashboard.