Less common elements Text size, text spacing, and overcrowding

Some of your students may have vision, but low vision abilities. These students rely on being able to make content larger. There are ways they can increase the text size on websites, change the spacing between lines of text on documents, and magnify images. For example, if you use Firefox as a browser it is fairly easy to turn on Reader Mode, which allows you to customize text for easier reading.

Why it's important

Resizing text for accessibility is like adjusting the lens on a pair of binoculars—without the ability to focus the view, someone might see only a blurry, indecipherable scene, no matter how vivid or detailed the landscape is. Just as different people need different focal strengths to clearly observe the same image, individuals with varying levels of vision need the flexibility to enlarge or reduce text to comfortably read and comprehend content. Without this simple yet vital adjustment, even the most informative or engaging content can become inaccessible, much like a beautiful vista lost behind an out-of-focus lens.

Guidelines

For text size, text spacing, and overcrowding to meet accessibility standards, use the following guidelines. Be sure to click through each tab.

Check text resizing

Success Criterion 1.4.4 Resize Text asks us to ensure that text can be resized up to twice its normal size without loss of content or functionality. Some of your learners may be able to see, but need the text to be larger to read it comfortably. Many technologies allow users to resize the text without zooming in. The most common place for an error to occur when text is resized is when the text is in a container, such as a textbox in Word.

Examples

The following text is meant to have "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country." in the textbox and "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." below the textbox.

The text in the textbox overflows the textbox, making the sentence below indiscernable.

The text in the textbox ends with their. "country." is hidden

You can see that in these examples, the size of the text makes the text difficult, if not impossible to read. In the first example, the text overflows the textbox and interferes with the sentence underneath it. In the second example, the text in the textbox is cut off, and you cannot read the end of the sentence.

Check text spacing

Text spacing is similar to text resizing. Some of your learners may need to change the spacing between lines to read the content comfortably. The errors that may occur when text spacing is changed, may look similar to the examples in the check text resizing section.

Avoid overcrowding

If content is overly crowded, it will become very difficult for learners using magnifiers to understand the order or meaning of the content. For example, the following infographic has a lot going on and would be difficult for any learner to know where to start:

A very crowded infographic. The graphics are close together and there is no clear reading order.

This example is with graphics, but a similar issue can apply with text. Some programs, such as Word, allow users to make text bigger. This is very useful for learners using magnifiers. Instead of magnifying the content, they can make the text bigger and then read. However, for other programs, such as Adobe PDF, learners frequently cannot change the text size and rely on a magnifier.

How to check it

To check for resizing, select the text you are concerned about and change the font size. If you used a font size of 12, make sure that the text is still readable if the font size is changed to 24. If you need assistance to change the font size, please see the following resources:

To check for text spacing, change the text spacing to have larger spaces and check if the text is still readable. If you need assistance to change the text spacing, please see the following resources:

For overcrowding, if you zoom in 200% on your content and it's difficult to read or understand the reading order, then your content is overcrowded.

How to fix this

If you have text size or text spacing issues, you may need to rephrase your content, style it without textboxes, or change the presentation format (i.e. use Canvas instead of Word) to fix it. Fixing these issues is highly individualized based on the document and content. Reach out to ADS for assistance if needed.

If your content is overcrowded, you should consider doing something different such as organizing the content to be a little more spaced out, find a different graphic, include an alternate version of the document that is not overcrowded, etc.

Text size, text spacing, and overcrowding review

Check text resizing: Ensure that text can be resized up to twice as large as normal.
Check text spacing: Ensure that if the space between lines of text is changed, the content is still readable.
Avoid overcrowding: Ensure that your content is not so crowded that it becomes difficult to understand the flow when magnified.