What the font-Part 1

I once sent an email (okay, this doesn't start off too enlightening, but stay with me). The senior manager came into my office and asked, "Emily, can you please increase the font size? I have a hard time reading it." My response was, "It's 14 pt font, but, I'll change it." I didn't get it. A 14 pt font should have been big enough. That was one of my first experiences with fonts and accessibility. Was this person what we would considered disabled? No that anyone could tell. Did this person need my emails to be more accessible because he had an issue with readability? Yep. As I later learned, the size isn't the only thing to consider when it comes to fonts.

My big three

For people who have heard me speak before, you know I love Verdana. But why is that? Because of what I call 'my big three'.

• Spacing
• Imposter
• Mirroring

Today, we'll delve more into spacing.

Spacing

Spacing refers to the character spacing. Those condensed fonts are great space savers, but they can affect readability for two reasons;

• the characters are so close together, so two characters can look like one.
• they can look like a wall of text

What font should you use?

Is your corporate font ok to use? In addition to doing tests like clear and rn to see if the c and l look like a d or if the r and n look like a m, I also like to do this test.

When it comes to spacing, I also compare three-four fonts to determine how well they are spaced.

For my Tableau friends, a google search revealed that Benton Sans was a recommended font to use because the Tableau font family is not publicly available. This is something I'll be following up on for sure.

I hope this information is helpful. If you need additional support, feel free to message me to learn more about fonts with a lunch and learn or user group talk.

And stay tuned for my upcoming dataviz accessibility workshop where I delve into fonts and so much more.

Visit my accessibility resources to also learn more.