RE: Readability of international language scripts

Hi John,

All good points.

At least in my experience, people with ID significantly increase font sizes, perhaps more than you imagine. Attached are two images as a demo. BBC.jpg is a snippet of a news page with an ad between the red banner and the news article title text. BBCbig.jpg is a snippet with the news article title text size significantly increased. Note the ad was “pushed out” and thus no longer appears.

BTW # 1: My EasyText.AI<https://easytext.ai/> R&D focuses on simplifying text, not its visual presentation, to increase comprehension. E.A. Draffan<https://www.linkedin.com/in/e-a-draffan-4969909/>’s R&D focuses more on the latter, via the use of symbols for example.

BTW #2: By happy coincidence, the ad is for a play, “The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes<https://artsemerson.org/Online/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::article_id=55350FE5-8872-42C4-B3E9-7143B19EF5BF>” by actors with ID, about AI and people with ID. I will see it this month.

John

John Rochford
University of Massachusetts Medical School
Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center
Director, INDEX Program
Faculty, Family Medicine & Community Health
www.DisabilityInfo.org
About Me<https://johnrochford.com/?promo=email_sig&utm_source=product&utm_medium=email_sig&utm_campaign=edit_panel&utm_content=plaintext>

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From: John Foliot <john.foliot@deque.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 8, 2020 1:41 PM
To: Rochford, John <john.rochford@umassmed.edu>
Cc: Steve Lee <stevelee@w3.org>; public-cognitive-a11y-tf <public-cognitive-a11y-tf@w3.org>; Drake, Ted <Ted_Drake@intuit.com>
Subject: Re: Readability of international language scripts

Hi John,

Respectfully, I don't think that's the actual case. In your scenario, using "browser zoom" or a dedicated screen magnifier doesn't remove ad content, it only makes that content larger (and *might* also introduce horizontal scrolling - the reason for Success Criterion 1.4.10 Reflow in WCAG 2.1). There may be a short-term benefit from moving sidebar content out of the way via zooming, but at the cost of that horizontal scrolling in some use-cases.

More to the point, I think at issue is that content authors choose to reduce their font-size (i.e. CSS - body {font-size:80%;} ), reducing the default browser font-size of 16 pt. down to something very close to 14 pt. - in other words they are going the wrong direction. I honestly don't think we'd ever get a WCAG SC in that forbade that (it would be too prescriptive), but in terms of authoring guidance I think we collectively might be able to provide more reasons and justifications for increased font-sizes simply as a matter of course, and feed that information into things like Project Silver and the tutorial work that is emerging from EO WG (etc.)

JF

On Wed, Jan 8, 2020 at 11:48 AM Rochford, John <john.rochford@umassmed.edu<mailto:john.rochford@umassmed.edu>> wrote:
Hi All,

In my own user research, people with intellectual disabilities have reported they prefer large font sizes. Briefly, if people prefer large font sizes because they increase comprehension, I suspect it’s because larger font sizes push out distracting content such as advertisements.

John

John Rochford
University of Massachusetts Medical School
Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center
Director, INDEX Program
Faculty, Family Medicine & Community Health
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From: John Foliot <john.foliot@deque.com<mailto:john.foliot@deque.com>>
Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 9:48 AM
To: Steve Lee <stevelee@w3.org<mailto:stevelee@w3.org>>
Cc: public-cognitive-a11y-tf <public-cognitive-a11y-tf@w3.org<mailto:public-cognitive-a11y-tf@w3.org>>; Drake, Ted <Ted_Drake@intuit.com<mailto:Ted_Drake@intuit.com>>
Subject: Re: Readability of international language scripts

Hi Steve,

Good question. From the Summary Conclusion however: "On overall preference, more than 50% of the UK participants chose 18 point sans serif, whereas more than 50% of Thai participants chose 18 point serif."

I recall back in the day when the W3C CSS WG established the base-line font-size for browsers at 16 pt., and then designers promptly modified their style sheets to: body {font-size: 80%;} (sigh)

JF

On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 8:03 AM Steve Lee <stevelee@w3.org<mailto:stevelee@w3.org>> wrote:
Thanks John, that IS fascinating. I wonder if there as size at which
readability starts to reduce? I understand that is the case with Western

Steve

On 07/01/2020 13:43, John Foliot wrote:
> but last year at the Web4All conference in San Francisco, there was a
> young woman who did a presentation along a similar vein. As I recall,
> she was researching readability of both Western scripts and Thai (??)
> script, and the somewhat astonishing conclusion she brought forward was
> that font *SIZE* also had a real


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​John Foliot | Principal Accessibility Strategist | W3C AC Representative
Deque Systems - Accessibility for Good
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​John Foliot | Principal Accessibility Strategist | W3C AC Representative
Deque Systems - Accessibility for Good
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