Visual Accessibility: Typography

Choosing a Font

Choosing the right font, or typeface, can make a big difference in how accessible your text is.  Fonts are often divided into two different types: serif and sans-serif.  Serif fonts, like Times New Roman or Georgia, contain small marks on the ends of letters (such as the small lines hanging down from the T in Times New Roman). Those small marks can make your text more difficult to read for readers with low vision.

In contrast, sans-serif fonts such as Arial or Verdana, do not contain such marks. In general, choosing a sans-serif font for your body text for signage and on-screen will make your document or website more accessible and easier to read for readers with low vision or reading using Braille software.  Serif fonts are better saved for headings.^[1]

Font Size

Font size is the size of text visible on the screen.  Choosing a font that is too small can make your text difficult for many to read.  This can be especially problematic for print documents, which a reader may not be able to easily magnify in order to increase the legibility.

When creating web-based text, it is important to ensure that text can be expanded for those who need a larger font size.  The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) recommend ensuring that text can be zoomed to 200%.^[2] In addition, we recommend using liquid layouts. Liquid layouts are based on percentages of the current browser window’s size. They flex with the size of the window, even if the current viewer changes their browser size as they’re viewing the site. Liquid width layouts allow very efficient use of the space provided by any given web browser window or screen resolution that can accommodate 200% text.