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Accessibility Guidelines "Silver"
https://w3c.github.io/silver/
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Surprising to see Verdana listed as a common reference font in APCA tool #336

Open sdw32 opened 3 years ago

sdw32 commented 3 years ago

From https://www.myndex.com/SAPC/

Values shown are for common sans-serif fonts (e.g., Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, Montserrat, Roboto, Calibri, Trebuchet).

It's surprising to see the Verdana in this list, the ratio of x-height to line height is completely different for Verdana compared to other typefaces, so it looks considerably bigger for the same specification of font-size. The bold version of verdana is also considerably bolder than most other fonts.

So, I would be very surprised if the same x-height and font-weight properties could be applied to both Arial and Verdana. I would suggest Verdana should be removed from the list of well-behaved fonts, and considered within the set of 'unusual' fonts that need to be compared in some way against the reference fonts

Myndex commented 3 years ago

@sdw32 Thank you for your opinion.

No, we will not be removing Verdana, a common web font, from the list because:

Verdana is a High-Accessible Font

YES, Verdana has a larger x-height, and Verdana is designed specifically for display on monitors. These are features that make Verdana good for accessibility. Yes, it is different than Arial, as Arial is just a clone of Helvetica. That is not relevant.

Helvetica, Montserrat, Barlow, etc are examples of "minimum" fonts. The growing "reference" font list will include fonts that MEET OR EXCEED the minimums of "Helvetica, Montserrat, Barlow."

At "some point in the future" there will be some segregation of fonts into classed categories for equivalence. PERHAPS this would be a good project for you. Here is a general guide (a rough preprint I distributed last year) detailing some of the important considerations: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338149302_Evaluating_Fonts_Font_Family_Selection_for_Accessibility_Display_Readability#fullTextFileContent

Thank you,

Andy

Andrew Somers W3 AGWG Invited Expert Myndex Color Science Researcher https://www.myndex.com/APCA/simple

jspellman commented 3 years ago

@sdw32 Thank you for your comment. Project members are working on your comment. You may see discussion in the comment thread and we may ask for additional information as we work on it. We will mark the official response when we are finished and close the issue. The comments above are the opinions of one person and not the consensus of the working group. We appreciate the time you took to write this comment and will give it serious consideration.

ChrisLoiselle commented 3 years ago

@jspellman This is ready for survey.

ChrisLoiselle commented 3 years ago

DRAFT RESPONSE: We believe the question has been answered per Andy's response on Feb 27th https://github.com/w3c/silver/issues/336#issuecomment-787071312 . I hope this answers your question, if it does not, please feel free to follow-up. Thank you, Chris

sdw32 commented 3 years ago

@myndex thank you for your comments.

Indeed, Verdana is a highly accessible font, I believe it's one of the best that's widely available and free. I use it in all my websites, and I'd like to see it used considerably more.

As stated though, for a given font-size spec (like 16px) the x-height of Verdana is considerably larger than most other fonts, and the line spacing is considerably smaller. Using Verdana with default line-height gives a poor outcome on readability. So, if the minimum spec for Helvetica was something like 16px (with default line-height), the equivalent spec Verdana is probably more like 14px and line-height = 115%. Requiring 16px verdana would make the font less likely to be used, as it means you can fit less text into the screen compared with 16 px Helvetica. It specifically because I'd like to see Verdana used more widely that it needs special treatment!

This issue with Verdana exposes the more general issue with line-height in HTML font specification. Line-Height is extremely important for readability, but at the moment I believe the tool only gives a minimum font -size, so it may inadvertently encourage developers to reduce the line height in order to achieve this font-size spec, while getting the same amount of text to fit within a particular amount of screen real estate. Line-height is extremely important for readability, so I think it's vital that it's included as part of a conformant typeface specification.