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Accessible Fonts and Styles
Overview
The fonts and styles that you choose for course materials impact learning material readability and usability. Accessible fonts and styles are textual and design choices that maximise the visual readability of text and reduce the cognitive load for readers. This includes choices such as font style, size, and weight, as well as spacing and indentation.
You should incorporate accessible and consistent fonts and styles in all of your written work, including documents, emails, presentations, handouts, and websites. Try to consistently use the same fonts across all of your course content when possible.
Rationale
Using accessible fonts and styles will make it easier for learners to read your learning materials.
The use of accessible fonts ensures that information is both distinguishable and understandable to more users, which is one of the fundamental principles underlying the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 WCAG recommends providing text that can be resized and respaced by the user. The AODA also provides recommendations on accessible fonts and font sizes.
Guidance
Choosing Accessible Fonts
Generally, you should choose fonts that are:
- simple and unembellished (i.e., straightforward, non-decorative or cursive fonts; examples include Arial, Tahoma, and Roboto)
- have clear distinctions between letter shapes
- have adequate spacing between letters
There is no one "best" accessible font, since contextual components and individual needs and preferences will vary. Some examples of accessible fonts that you may want to try out include the following:
- Arial
- Calibri
- Century Gothic
- Comic Sans
- Helvetica
- Tahoma
- Times New Roman
- Verdana
Serif and Sans-Serif Fonts
Serif Fonts (e.g. Times New Roman) have small embellishments on the ends of letters and more variable line thickness. Sans serif Fonts (e.g. Arial) do not have embellishments and have more consistent line thickness, making them historically preferable for legibility. However, this is not a fixed rule. A good practice is to choose simpler fonts and to use the same fonts consistently across your text content.
Accessible Text Formatting
When formatting your text, consider the following guidelines:
- Alignment: In North America, text is generally left-aligned. Avoid justified text (i.e., text that is both right- and left-aligned to the margins, rather than one or the other), as this can make reading more difficult.
- Font Size: Generally, text should be large and scalable. This means a minimum of 12- or 14-point font for documents and a minimum of 20-point font for presentations.
- Case: Use proper sentence case and structure.
- Text Spacing: Use 1.5 spacing or higher for line spacing and 2 for spaces between paragraphs.
- Font Styles: Avoid using bold, italic or underline font styles on their own to convey information as often screen readers will not read the style and this information could be lost.
Recommendations
Try
- Using simply fonts that have distinct letter shapes and appropriate letter spacing.
- Ensuring that line spacing is 1.5 or higher.
- Ensuring that paragraph spacing is 2 or higher.
- Using sentence case.
Avoid
- Using justified text alignment.
- Using text format (e.g. bold, italics, underline) only to convey important information.
- Prioritizing fancy styles over legibility.
Resources
Penn State. Font face on the web. Accessibility and Usability at Penn State.
Centre for Teaching and Learning. Creating accessible handouts and documents. Accessible Teaching and Learning Resources. U of Oxford.
Centre for Teaching and Learning. Tips for creating accessible materials. Accessible Learning Environments. Queen’s U.
Microsoft Support. Customize or create new styles.
Step-by-step guide to modifying existing styles and creating new styles in Microsoft Word
National Network for Equitable Library Service. Accessible fonts. The Canadian Accessible Library System.
Specific accessible font and style guidelines for various mediums including documents, presentations and websites