Section One: Increase accessibility by making good font choices
Text is your flexible friend; it can be transformed into audio or braille; used to describe non-text elements; and be presented visually in an infinite number of sizes.
In the world of accessible design 'goodies' and 'baddies', text is a 'goodie'.
Unfortunately, text also has the potential to be very bad; bad text is:
- unable to be changed to suit the preferences of the end user
- difficult to read due to font incompatibilites.
- so small it is unreadable
- inaccessible due to inadequate contrast between text and background or due to 'busy' backgrounds
- presented in inpenetrable blocks that make it difficult to read
- presented as an image - that can't be resized or read by people using screen readers.
- difficult to read because it is moving or blinking.
This eBook provides simple strategies to ensure that visitors to the web pages you create, will not be taking up your valuable time by complaining to you about any of the above problems.
In sections two and three, we will explore the issues related to 'text size' and usability. In this first section, the emphasis will be on understanding how to choose fonts that are accessible, usable and appopriate to the aims of your site.
The two roads to accessible web text
As a Web designer committed to accessible Web design there are - in general - two approaches. You can take the easy route, summed up in the following phrase:
It is better not to set a font size or type at all - but instead leave this decision to the user.
Or the more difficult route - which involves learning about the vagaries of online typography and taking an active role in designing the text on your pages. For many designers control of web text is essential for reasons of branding, house style, subject appropriateness, or just plain old ego.
Control of Web text can also realise usability gains; Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) provide limited control over margins, line width, line height, colour and font choice and size - all of which can help layout text in a way that makes it easier to read. And a Web page that is easier to read is a more accessible Web page.
If you are happy to follow the first route (i.e. do nothing), you can stop reading now. Assuming readability is not compromised by inaccessible colour schemes, you already know enough to create accessible text for the Web.
Visitors to your Website will be presented with the default font and font size they have set in their Web browser preferences - and they will be able to change these properties to suit their own needs. (There is one problem with this particular solution and that is that the majority of people probably do not know that they can change the default font in their browser preferences, or, indeed, how to do it.)
If you decide that you need to, or want to, have some control over the size, colour, layout and typeface of the text on your Web pages, then you also need to 'buy into' the idea that you will never be able to completely control how a user will see your text.
HTML was never designed to provide sophisticated typographic or layout capabilities. On the contrary its main job was to enforce the logical structure of documents; leaving the presentation of the page up to the individual capabilities of the computers and devices that would display the page.
Although you can, with the help of CSS or the deprecated FONT tag, provide your own set of 'suggestions' about how a Web page should look - and we will examine what those are later in this book - users can override practically all of your choices by setting their own browser preferences. And on an accessible Website, that is how it should be.
"you can't always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes you get what you need", Mick Jagger.
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