Re: [UnDoc comment] Fwd: About 1.4.12 Text Spacing (AA)

Thanks Shawn, good timing. Text Spacing is the document we are currently working on.


Norah


Norah Sinclair
Information and Instructional Designer, Project Manager

AMAC Accessibility | College of Design
Georgia Institute of Technology
512 Means Street | Suite 250 | Atlanta, GA 30318

phone 404.894.7432
www.amacusg.org<http://www.amacusg.org/>


________________________________
From: Bakken, Brent <brent.bakken@pearson.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2018 9:50 AM
To: Shawn Henry
Cc: Sinclair, Norah M; EOWG (E-mail)
Subject: Re: [UnDoc comment] Fwd: About 1.4.12 Text Spacing (AA)

Thanks Shawn. Added to GitHub.


Brent A. Bakken
Director, Accessibility Strategy & Education Services
Psychometrics & Testing Services
Pearson


512 202 1087
brent.bakken@pearson.com<mailto:brent.bakken@pearson.com>


[http://accessibility4school.pearson.com/access/4c49fe02-e204-46b4-b6f0-82f5a3f159cb/pearson-accessibility.jpg]









On Wed, Sep 19, 2018 at 8:41 AM Shawn Henry <shawn@w3.org<mailto:shawn@w3.org>> wrote:
Hi Norah, Brent, and UnDoc editors,

Please see below about an issue with SC 1.4.12. Basically, there was a misunderstanding that the default text had to have that spacing.

I would be good to make very clear in the Understanding Doc that is not the case -- that the SC is about users changing spacing.

(I'm not sure whether or not Daniel had read the Understanding doc -- in any case, we want it to be clear. :)

Thanks,
~Shawn


-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: About 1.4.12 Text Spacing (AA)
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2018 05:48:38 +0000
From: ...
To: Shawn Henry <shawn@w3.org<mailto:shawn@w3.org>>
CC: wai@w3.org<mailto:wai@w3.org> <wai@w3.org<mailto:wai@w3.org>>

Hi Shawn,

That makes perfect sense :-)
Reading is key I guess ;-)
Thanks for explaining.

Daniel


> On 18 Sep 2018, at 21:58, Shawn Henry <shawn@w3.org<mailto:shawn@w3.org>> wrote:
>
> Dear Daniël,
>
> WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.4.12 Text Spacing says: "... no loss of content or functionality occurs by setting all of the following..."
>
> The intent is for content to work when users *choose* to *override* default text spacing.
> It is not intended that the spacing listed is the default spacing of the content that all people get.
>
> More information is in "Understanding Success Criterion 1.4.12: Text Spacing" at:
>       https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.w3.org_WAI_WCAG21_Understanding_text-2Dspacing.html&d=DwIDaQ&c=0YLnzTkWOdJlub_y7qAx8Q&r=v-L6X-ScaY5UKb-F-_zcuXdbPw2UYK_gaTG8R5d9h7U&m=KbfjJZI_1Lcq1E5TfEj0yKSj1bSSht3ebTrhufRKfSs&s=SATNQTU_Y1QdSxkLTrbjCBNdFGHaacdO1QqeO8nlt4M&e=
>
> Does that make sense now?
>
> We will look at better explaining this in "Understanding Success Criterion 1.4.12: Text Spacing".
>
> Regards,
> ~Shawn
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.w3.org_People_Shawn_&d=DwIDaQ&c=0YLnzTkWOdJlub_y7qAx8Q&r=v-L6X-ScaY5UKb-F-_zcuXdbPw2UYK_gaTG8R5d9h7U&m=KbfjJZI_1Lcq1E5TfEj0yKSj1bSSht3ebTrhufRKfSs&s=2_2SAc-KMqeG7OUs1f5ApKD-fet1RfQ1NKj7E1DRDqs&e=>
>
>
>
> On 9/17/2018 7:50 AM, ...wrote:
>> Hi,

>> We’ve been trying to implement WCAG2.1, but are having some problems with your 1.4.12 rules.

>> We are trying to make our website as usable as possible for as many people possible, but the text-spacing is making this rather difficult. We use Noto-Sans and use a rather large font-size (16px on mobile, 18 on tablet-ish and 20 on desktop, as base font). We use Noto-Sans, because it has a high contrast and is very legible. However, applying a 0.12em letter-spacing and a 0.16em word-spacing makes our texts hard to read for those that do not suffer from dyslexia.

>> Did you have a specific font in mind when you made this rule? Because some fonts are already dyslexia-friendly and these would suffer from this rule. So I think this rule might not meet its purpose and might have a negative effect: I think designers will change fonts to one that is by default very narrow, so the letter-spacing will just become a sort of “reset”. I even think font-makers will come up with new fonts to counter-effect this WCAG-rule.

>> Then there is the line-height rule. I agree that this is absolutely necessary, on regular body text. But we have a header (h1) that have a 40px font-size (32px on mobile). A 1.5 line-height is unnecessarily high and will create problems when the title is over multiple lines (like on mobile). This rule will also cause designers to use less big fonts, causing actually more problems than you are trying to solve.

>> May I suggest to exclude Headers (and labels and such) from this rule? And/or maybe change this rule, based on font-size (like you did with contrast).

>> Also the “spacing following paragraphs” is decreasing a readers flow through a website. It creates a large gap, especially on websites with large fonts (who aim to help the visually impaired). Again your rules will work against you, causing designers to decrease the font to improve readability for the majority.

>> Have you actually tested these properties on a real website (I noticed w3.org<http://w3.org> is still not complying with a lot of your own recommendations)? And do you test your suggestions with the right representation of real users?

>> I mean, we can’t implement rules that make it noticeably harder for 60-70 % of our visitors.

>> I hope you can find some clever solution to accommodate all users as opposed to just the group with disabilities.

>> And yes, you can save my message publicly online ;-)

>> /Sincerely,/
...