Accessible Fonts: A Brief Introduction 

KATIE ALLEN Welcome to our accessibility tutorial on font style 
and size. My name is Katie Allen, and I'm a program associate 
from the Vera Institute of Justice. This video is about font 
accessibility for survivors with disabilities. I'll talk about font 
styles, size, spacing, and other elements related to accessible 
font. 

Fonts are a big part of our communication with survivors. Intake 
materials, outreach materials, and other materials are full of text. 
Survivors access our content by reading a lot of information. 
Some survivors with disabilities will not be able to access our 
materials unless we use accessible fonts. 

In this video, I'll discuss accessible font elements, and why 
they're important for survivors with disabilities. I'll share some 
examples of accessible fonts and inaccessible fonts. I'll 
demonstrate how to make fonts accessible, and explain the Web 
Content Accessibility Guidelines for font. 

What do we mean when we're talking about accessible font style, 
size, and spacing? Generally, the most accessible font styles are 
sans serif, or without the dashes at the end of each letter. Serifs, 
or the dashes at the end of each letter, can make the letters run 
together and be difficult to read for some survivors. It's best to 


use bold and italic fonts strategically to emphasize a point in your 
document, rather than arbitrarily or throughout the entire 
document. 

Font size is important for accessibility as well. For printed, 
electronic, and web based materials, it's best to use 14 point font 
in the body of the text. For presentations like webinars, we want 
to use a minimum of 20 point font on the slide. And for in-person 
presentations, it's most accessible to a minimum of 28 point font. 
This might mean that you'll have to add more slides or pages to 
your documents to make them readable. Some survivors may 
request larger font sizes or different styles for printed documents. 

Line spacing refers to the amount of vertical space between lines 
of text. Single spaced lines are too narrow and can be difficult to 
read. It's generally best to keep line spacing between 1.25 and 2. 
Some of the most universally accessible fonts are sans serif fonts, 
which means they don't have serifs, or dashes at the end of each 
letter; fonts that have enough space and have variable spacing 
between each letter; and fonts that include letters that look 
different from each other. 

Some examples of sans serif accessible fonts include for Verdana, 
Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, and Century Gothic. Variable spaced 
fonts are fonts where different letters take up a proportional 
amount of space. For example, the letter I takes up less space 
than the letter M, because the letter I needs less space than M. 


And this is opposed to mono spaced fonts, where each letter gets 
the same amount of space, even if they don't need it. 

Most accessible fonts have different characters for the letters L, I, 
and the number 1. Many fonts have lowercase L's that look the 
same as capital I's. Verdana and Tahoma are examples where all 
the characters are different from each other. 

On this side, I'm sharing examples of less accessible and 
inaccessible fonts. A few examples of serif fonts or Georgia, 
Times New Roman, and Cambria. You'll notice that these fonts 
have serifs, or dashes, at the end of each letter. Some other 
inaccessible fonts include examples like cursive fonts, excessively 
bold fonts, typewriter fonts, script fonts that look like someone's 
handwriting, overly decorative fonts, fonts that use all capital 
letters, condensed fonts, and monospaced fonts. 

When we're creating materials, we can choose line spacing 
options single, 1.5, double, or multiple. And then we can 
customize line spacing when we choose "multiple". Lines should 
be spaced at 1.25 to 2, to help guide readers to the next line. 

On this slide, I'm showing examples of single, 1.25, 1.5, and 
double line spacing. Too much space between lines can make the 
text and content look disjointed. This can be especially 
inaccessible for survivors who have certain cognitive disabilities 
that impact visual comprehension. 


On the other hand, too little space can make the words run 
together, which is particularly inaccessible for survivors who have 
low vision or certain learning disabilities like dyslexia. 

There are some other considerations within different accessibility 
for printed and electronic documents. These include using left 
justification, which aligns text on the left side of the page to help 
readers find the beginning of each line in the same place; using 
white space, like margins, which helps separate pieces of content 
to improve the visual layout of your document; completing words 
on each line or avoiding hyphenated words between lines. 
Hyphenating words between lines can break up the content in a 
way that can be difficult for survivors with cognitive and learning 
disabilities to understand. 

Using high color contrast for text and images-- and you can 
watch our video on color contrast to learn more about that. And 
having multiple formats, like PDF, plain text, and large print for 
survivors who request them. Because most importantly, when it 
comes to font, style, size, and spacing, survivors know what they 
need. If you're creating documents for a specific group of 
survivors, ask about accommodations, that you can provide 
documents in ways that are most accessible to individuals' needs. 
If you're creating general documents for an unknown audience, 
have multiple formats on hand, so you can offer them if needed. 


How do we make fonts accessible? Next, I'll demonstrate how to 
change the font, style, size, and line spacing in your document. 
On this slide, I'm sharing three lines of text. The first line says, 
"This is a line of text in 20 point Verdana font," which it is. The 
second line of text says, "This is a line of text in 22 point Century 
Gothic font." So we're going to change that text to be in 22 point 
Century Gothic font. 

First, you'll highlight the line of text. And then we'll go to the 
dropdown menu for Font in your toolbar. And click the arrow next 
to the font menu. And a list of font options will appear. We'll 
select Century Gothic from the list, and then select Regular from 
the dropdown menu next to it. 

So now our line of text is in Century Gothic font. But we want to 
change it to be 22 point in size. To change the font size, you'll go 
to the Font Size dropdown menu on your toolbar, which is next to 
the Style menu, and click the dropdown arrow. And then a list of 
font sizes will appear. 

You might notice that 22 is not an option in our list of font sizes. 
But you can still make your line of text 22 point font by typing 
the number 22 in the font box and clicking Return or Enter. So 
now our second line of text is in 22 point Century Gothic font. 

The third line of text on the slide says, "This line spacing is 1.25." 
But right now, the line spacing between these lines is just single 


spaced. So now we'll change the line spacing between all three 
lines. We'll want to highlight all three lines of text, and then go to 
the Line Spacing dropdown menu on your toolbar, and click the 
dropdown arrow. 

You'll notice options of line spacing listed, but 1.25 is not an 
option on the list. So we'll go to the bottom of the dropdown 
menu and select Line Spacing options. When we do this, a box 
appears that's called Paragraph. We'll go to the third section of 
the box, called Spacing, and to the dropdown list that says Line 
Spacing. In this dropdown list, we'll select Multiple. 

Then we have a chance to change the line spacing in the box next 
to our Line Spacing menu. And we'll type 1.25 and click OK. Now 
our lines are spaced at 1.25. 

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines provide guidance about 
accessible web content, and also about accessible electronic 
documents that are not necessarily on websites like, Word 
documents and PowerPoint slides. The Web Content Accessibility 
Guidelines, or WCAGs, also provide some accessibility guidelines 
for font. The WCAGs recommend using sans serif fonts that are 
widely available, like Verdana, Helvetica, an Arial, because most 
operating systems display these fonts. 

On web sites, fonts should be resizable up to 200%, without 
losing any content or function of the website. Sometimes, you'll 


find websites with visible font resize options, which is 
recommended. The WCAGs also recommend that line spacing is 
1.5 within paragraphs. 

WCAGs caution against using images with text, and I'll share an 
example of what I mean on the next slide. But this is very 
common in social media. Text that blinks or moves is also 
inaccessible for many people, and it can trigger seizures for 
people with epilepsy and other seizure disorders. It could also be 
distracting for people with attention deficit disorders and other 
learning or cognitive disabilities. 

On this slide, I'm showing an example of an image of text. This 
image includes a person looking out on the horizon, and text is 
covering the image that says, "The more you know yourself, the 
more you forgive yourself. Confucius." In this image, the color 
contrast is too low. Some of the text is too small. Some of the 
font obscures the image, and some of the image obscures the 
font. 

Survivors who are using screen readers, often who are blind, 
cannot read the text inside the image without alternative text. 
Survivors with low vision can often not read the text inside of an 
image because of the low color contrast and the distracting, 
obscuring elements the image that make the text difficult to see. 
In this example, we don't need the image to show the text. We 


could share this image in the text next to each other instead, so 
that both the text and the image are readable and viewable. 

To recap, accessible fonts are important for survivors with a 
variety of disabilities for a variety of reasons. Some fonts are 
visually inaccessible, and others pose issues with reading 
comprehension. In print and electronic documents, fonts should 
generally be sans serif, at least 14 point in size, consistent 
throughout the document, and include 1.5 line spacing within 
paragraphs. 

Font sizes should be even larger in presentations. We can easily 
change the font style, sizes, and line spacing in Microsoft Office. 
And it's helpful to create multiple formats, including large print 
formats, to meet a variety of survivors' needs. 

Thank you for watching. You can find out more on our website at 
www.endabusepwd.org. This video on font style, size, and 
spacing is part of a Disability and Deaf Resource Center series of 
how to videos to help your agency increase accessibility of your 
services, outreach, and programs to reach survivors with 
disabilities. This how to video series includes videos about how to 
improve the accessibility of outreach, educational, training, and 
intake materials. 

We also have videos about general accessibility guidelines to 
ground this work. The Vera Institute of Justice Center on 


Victimization and Safety, created this video series with a grant 
from the Office of Violence Against Women at the Department of 
Justice. The Center on Victimization and Safety at the Vera 
Institute of Justice works to ensure that victim services effectively 
identify, reach, and meet the needs of marginalized crime 
survivors. 

We work with survivors to build and strengthen the capacity of 
communities, organizations, and providers to respond effectively 
to and prevent sexual violence, domestic violence, and other 
forms of abuse against people with disabilities and Deaf people. 
Ending abuse of people with disabilities is a team effort. So 
please contact us for support. The End Abuse email address is 
cvs@vera.org. The End Abuse phone number is 212-376-3096. 
The End Abuse toll free phone number is 855-274-8222.