Accessible Text on the Web

Font choices drastically impact the accessibility of a web page. Moreover, accessibility on the web is a real need. It is more than just being compliant with industry standards or ADA. Instead, the best fonts are as inclusive as possible. People who have challenges visually reading something will use a screen reader to verbally read content from a web page to them. The wrong or poorly used type can make a screen reader misfunction. However, accessibility isn’t just for those who use screen readers. Many older users have to enlarge type on the web, and type that is already larger and includes enough white space helps fill their need. Ultimately, all readers benefit from clear and easy to read content.

Some Simple Ways to Make Online Content Accessible

• Use sans serif fonts. These fonts do not have decorative swirls and caps. Instead, they are plain and clear. This makes them easier to read.
• Make sure your font is a common one that is familiar for both the user and adaptive technologies.
• Make sure your text is scalable and doesn’t break the layout if a user resizes the text, browser window, or images within the content.
• Use enough space between lines of text to make them visually distinct from each other.

Additional Tips to Make Text More Accessible

Accessibility on the web is an important and, thus, extensive topic. While this article does not attempt to cover all aspects of making text accessible, there is more detailed information available on Accessible Typefaces, Fonts, and Text: Optimizing the Reading Experience by Jared Smith.