Fonts

Your eyes constantly scan the text in front of you to determine patterns from symbols to form meaningful relationships. Whether you have a low vision disability, a reading disorder, or no impairment at all, you can have the following problems reading text depending on font choice and spacing:

recognizing character patterns due to font family (typeface) choice
recognizing separate characters due to proximity and font family choice
recognizing words putting all the characters together

With character location, spacing, and font choice all put together, you can have some confusing, if not embarrassing, results.

The text should read: "We Cordially Invite You To Sandra's Retirement Party. Tarts & Drinks. Please RSVP. Thank You Pouches Provided to All Guests."

Enlarge example image

Best Practices

The Invite example provides multiple issues that you should consider:

It is so easy to misinterpret script fonts given their embellishments and the increasing usage of computers for communication purposes. For example:

Can the "C" in "Cordially" look like a "G", the "I" in "Invite" look like a "J" or "T", or the "P" in "Pouches" look like a "D"?
Can you read the "S", "R", or "P" in "Sandra's Retirement Party", "RSVP" in "Please RSVP", or the "G" in "Guests"?

For individuals with low vision or reading disorders, these are all potential misinterpretations.

If you are going to use a script font, use just one and in moderation. You want your users to be able to get the tone of your message (e.g. official, formal), but you also need it to function for them by allowing users to read the who, what, when, where and why, along with the how (e.g. RSVP information).

Everything else can be a serif font for some light embellishments and/or italicized looking font. Don't use the italics format as this changes the meaning for screen readers as being emphasized ( the <em> HTML tag).

You brain is constantly leaping between patterns to recognize, and this can overwhelm some users with information overload causing headaches and confusion. Two fonts is ideal, but three would be the maximum on any message. These can be used at different sizes to determine importance. With regard to programming formatting, you'll want the fonts and sizes to be a part of the style sheet, so you don't override size needs of low vision users who may not even see your font choices.

To reiterate for the third time, choosing a font is a very important decision as it will reflect on the message. Sometimes, one letter in your message can make a word look completely different, like the morphing "t" into an "f" in "tarts". Keep in mind, you knew the second time you saw the "t" that it was a "t", but your brain may have interpreted the first one differently in order to quickly create a word. Our brains can do that with misspelled words.

Fonts

Poor Font Example: Invite

Best Practices

References

EIR Accessibility Coordinator

Karole Schroeder

Fonts

Poor Font Example: Invite

Best Practices

1: Avoid script fonts when possible

2: Use one (1) script font only

3: Don't use more than three (3) fonts

4: Choose font families (typefaces) wisely

5: Text should be large enough to be readable

6: Text should be legible enough to understand

References

Guides and How-To's

Guidelines

Simulations

Cross-reference: Accessible Documents

Cross-reference: Accessible Images and Multimedia

Cross-reference: Digital Writing

EIR Accessibility Coordinator

Karole Schroeder