Re: Can someone explain the therapeutic value of switching to one font family

Hi Wayne,

I’m not sure I’d put it as therapeutic, but the rational is simple enough.

A short tangential question first: How long do you think a reasonable time to test a page for WCAG 2.1 should be?

10min? 30min? 2 hours? 5 hours? 10 hours?

Depending on the complexity of the page and experience of the tester, I’d say most pages are in the 20min – 2 hour range for 2.0.

Here are three scenarios for particular SCs:


·        The page has no video, therefore 1.2.x are not applicable. (5 seconds to tick off that SC).

·        The page has a large main navigation, but no skip link. That is one item, easy to pick out of the page. (1 minute to note this issue.)

·        The page is large with many elements, and you have to check every single one is using the appropriate markup for 1.3.1. (5-30 minutes to note issues found, and there are always issues found.)

SCs which have to be checked for every bit of content / functionality on the page are very time consuming, and it multiplies up very rapidly. It would be very easy to price-out accessibility for being practical for most organisations.

Testing every bit of content for every possible font-family (which is the logical result of ‘any’ font-family), is not at all feasible.

I note your suggested test for font-family [1] essentially provides a method to pick one font-family to test with.

I’d be happy to go down that route, but I think rather than having every company pick a font, the WCAG materials should suggest ones for testing.

Then the matter is simply whether we include that in the main SC text, or in the understanding document.

The rational is essentially: something, or nothing. Testing everything is like asking a car-maker to create a reasonably priced family car that drives to the south pole, it is not reasonable.

We cover most issue by the act of changing font, regardless of what font is chosen. Therefore, that is a good improvement.

Cheers,

-Alastair

1] https://github.com/w3c/wcag21/issues/276




From: Wayne Dick <wayneedick@gmail.com>
Date: Saturday, 15 April 2017 at 14:57
To: WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Subject: Can someone explain the therapeutic value of switching to one font family
Resent-From: WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Resent-Date: Saturday, 15 April 2017 at 14:58

How will being able to switch to one font family help? I really don't understand it. What is the justification of this limitation in terms of helping anyone. What family?
Again how does the ability to switch to one color combination help anyone. What color?
Let's pick H.

How do either of these help users pick colors and fonts that lie outside a small list provided by developers?
I can see ruling out ridiculous color combinations that don't have enough contrast for visibility. I can see ruling out fonts with extreme dimensions for the em unit (16px).
Now there are many sites that can handle 200% enlargement and break at 225%.
As stated I cannot see why a developer would not design a sight to enable a change to one different color and one different font. What language prevents that narrow interpretation?
Is that narrow interpretation it?
These SCs just do not make any sense.