Re: Understanding SC 2.5.8: Target Size (Minimum) (Level AA) potential edit from David Berman

Hi Alastair,

Thank you very much.

Regarding the descending letters, I agree it's a minor part of the issue;
however, for example in PDF (and my comment is specifically about a
situation that arises digital books (PDF, EPUB, etc) the link areas is
indeed painted by the authoring tool around the entire word block (thus a
descender does indeed make it taller).

More broadly, I'm a huge fan of this success criterion, especially, for
example, in navigation menus in HTML, including the 24px height: we
encourage our clients to do this every time.

Rather, this arose for us when validating a textbook EPUB. Having to have
18pt or greater linespace between the two rows of a TOC entry that happens
to wrap onto 2 lines. And so I'm arguing that the "inline" exception should
be worded or interpreted to apply to TOC entries in the same way it applies
to linked text that is within a paragraph of text in an article on
nytimes.com .

I'd love your further take on this.

Thanks!
David




On Mon, 18 Aug 2025 at 04:39, Alastair Campbell <
alastair.campbell@thisisgain.com> wrote:

> Hi David,
>
> *>  in order to fulfil your instructions and not be able to use the
> “Inline” exception, that one would have to increase the line spacing
> between consecutive baselines of the wording in the entire TOC to at least
> 24 pixels (even more if there are descending letters, such as y or p, which
> there are bound to be).*
>
> In web (and I think PDFs) I don’t think the size of the link is affected
> by whether it has descending letters.
>
> But overall, yes, if all the text is contained in the link the
> inline-exception is not applicable. It is not necessarily related to
> letter-size, you could buffer the link size without increasing text size.
>
> Overall, 24px of height is not very much for users to accurately hit,
> particularly for people with mobility impairments.
>
> An HTML default list of links has a height of about 19-20px by default
> already, so it’s a minor bump in size/spacing of the targets.
>
> Also, if your workflow isn’t HTML, note that “points" are not the same
> size as pixels. The ratio between sizes in points and CSS pixels is 1pt =
> 1.333px, therefore 14pt and 18pt are equivalent to approximately 18.5px and
> 24px.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> -Alastair
>
>
> *From: *David Berman <berman@davidberman.com>
> *Date: *Monday, 11 August 2025 at 17:47
> *To: *public-agwg-comments@w3.org <public-agwg-comments@w3.org>
> *Subject: *Understanding SC 2.5.8: Target Size (Minimum) (Level AA)
> potential edit from David Berman
>
> You don't often get email from berman@davidberman.com. Learn why this is
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> Hi committee,
>
> Thank you again for all the amazing work!
>
> Regarding the following existing wording within Understanding SC 2.5.8:
> Target Size (Minimum) (Level AA):
>
> *“Except when... Inline: The target is in a sentence or its size is
> otherwise constrained by the line-height of non-target text;”*
>
> If one follows the guidance you provide here, there are situations where
> people are going to do the opposite of what I’m confident you would have
> hoped they would do. Let me explain by example...
>
> Consider a Table of Contents within a 100-page EPUB or PDF file of a
> textbook where each entry in the Table of Contents has the entire entry
> hypertext linked (to take you, for instance, to the first page of a
> chapter). One would hope that the “Inline” exception would apply; however,
> the target is not “in a sentence” nor is it “constrained by the line-height
> of non-target text” (because all of the text surrounding it also has
> targets). Thus, it would seem that in order to fulfil your instructions and
> not be able to use the “Inline” exception, that one would have to increase
> the line spacing between consecutive baselines of the wording in the entire
> TOC to at least 24 pixels (even more if there are descending letters, such
> as y or p, which there are bound to be). This would result in a typical TOC
> in a textbook that spanned perhaps 3 book pages now spanning 6 or more book
> pages. And if there are dot leaders, the gap is even more extreme. If you
> agree that this is an undesirable outcome, then the vocabulary of the
> exception should be broadened to allow for the arrangement of text that I
> am describing to also fall within the exception.
>
> Would you agree, or should we indeed insist that such TOCs have at least
> 24 pixels between TOC elements?
>
> And if you do agree, would you like help with the proposed wording (as I
> have ideas on how we get there without tradeoffs)?
>
> - David Berman CPWA, ADS
>
>
>
> --
> David Berman, RGD, FGDC, CPWA
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