Question

Briefly discuss the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines for font selection

Answer 1

Answer:-

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops standards and support materials to help you understand and implement accessibility.

1. Appropriateness.
Is the font correct for the audience, the message and the content? In other words, will the client's message hit its intended target and create the necessary emotion/action in their clients? Will the choice of typeface be so obtrusive that it will dominate the message? Craig Weiland's answer illustrates this concept very well. Actually Craig's answer illustrates just about everything very well.

2. Legibility.
Designers sometimes seem to forget that the words they're setting need to be read by an end user. There are many books written on the science behind legibility - seemingly all by Swiss people. There are formulas that can be applied to apply the correct leading, kerning etc, but sometimes the best way is to simply print a paragraph on a laser printer and try and read it yourself. If it requires too much concentration or work on your part - and you are presumably visually literate - then it's probably going to be a chore for the average reader. Again, the client's message won't make it through if their audience stops reading because it's all too hard.

3. Audience.
A large proportion of our audience doesn't live and breathe type - many seem not to know the difference between Gill the typeface and Gill the thing a fish breathes through. In the main the audience treats type as a necessary evil - a vehicle to bring them the message they're actually interested in. In one way this revelation is profoundly depressing; it's quite deflating to present a beautifully set piece in, say, Garamond and be told 'nah... we don't really like Times New Roman'. On the other hand, it's an advantage when a client briefs you to 'just do it in Times New Roman' and you are able to sell them a far superior solution whilst simultaneously fulfilling the brief (in their minds at least). To be an optimist the audience's indifference to type gives designers a golden opportunity to inform, educate and improve the experience of their clients.

4. 'Bad' typefaces.
Decades ago I read a quote by Fred Woodward ex Rolling Stone creative director who said something along the lines of 'there are no bad typefaces, just bad typography. Every font can look good if used in the correct way'. That quote has stuck with me more than any other about type. It's been obligatory to slay Comic sans for about ten years now (fair enough as it IS ugly) - but I wonder how many people remember that Helvetica had about the same rap in the mid 80s? Then Neville Brody started using it as a reaction against designers plagiarising his hand drawn 'constructivist' fonts. He figured if he took the most maligned but universal font and reinvigorated its usage then nobody could copy him. He was completely wrong on that score, as within two years just about every piece of print you picked up used Helvetica Black with extremely tight letterspacing and leading. Another year later and it was Helvetica Ultra Thin with very tight letter spacing etc. Not saying this is going to happen with Comic Sans - but Helvetica went from being a 'bad' typeface to a 'great' typeface seemingly overnight.

5. Time
Another post covers this and it's an excellent point. If you're paid to design then sometimes (OK, most of the time) you are up against tight deadlines. When time is tight you want to go for the fonts that you know best, the ones which will work in the most diverse range of applications, that have good readability and a number of different weights. If you're up against time on a small project you don't want to find that you're locked in to using a font which only has two weights and looks diabolical in body copy when a larger job from the same client comes along.

1. Content
   the information in a Web page or Web application, including:
   Natural information such as text, images, and videos
   Markup code or markup that defines structure, presentation, etc.
2. Assistive technology
   Alternative keyboards, virtual keyboards, Touchpad, trackball, hand wands, switches, voice
   recognition, eye tracking, screen readers, talking browser, Braille display, Screen magnifiers & etc
3. User agents
   Web browsers, media players, and other "user agents“
4. Users
   user's' knowledge, experiences, and in some cases, adaptive strategies using the Web
5. Software Engineer
   developers - designers, coders, authors, etc., including developers with disabilities and users who contribute content
6. Authoring Tools
   software that creates Web sites
7. Evaluation Tools
   Web accessibility evaluation tools, WAI-ARIA for accessible rich Internet applications,