Re: Working on New Styles for W3C Specifications

Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de> writes:
> I know that this will get me into trouble, but anyway: I *like*
> reading specs in wide windows. I *want* long lines. I can understand
> that others prefer narrower columns, but how about just resizing the
> browser window?

norm writes:
>+1. That narrow column is awful.
>Be seeing you, norm

WCAG 2.0 provides a set of requirements one of which relates to line length:

1.4.8 Visual Presentation: For the visual presentation of blocks of
text, a mechanism is available to achieve the following: (Level AAA)
[1]

2. Width is no more than 80 characters or glyphs (40 if CJK).


"For people with some reading or vision disabilities, long lines of
text can become a significant barrier. They have trouble keeping their
place and following the flow of text. Having a narrow block of text
makes it easier for them to continue on to the next line in a block.
Lines should not exceed 80 characters or glyphs (40 if CJK), where
glyphs are the element of writing in the writing system for the text..
Studies have shown that Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) characters
are approximately twice as wide as non-CJK characters when both types
of characters are displayed with characteristics that achieve the same
readability, so the maximum line width for CJK characters is half that
of non-CJK characters."

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-contrast-visual-presentation.html

--
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG

www.paciellogroup.com | www.HTML5accessibility.com |
www.twitter.com/stevefaulkner
HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives -
dev.w3.org/html5/alt-techniques/
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Received on Thursday, 1 December 2011 11:14:37 UTC