Re: Length of line

Hi Shwetank

Can you help us understand how hyphenation works in those languages? In
English and French, (the languages I speak), the web the page just wraps
the entire word if it doesn't fit. So there is not generally hyphenation
for web writing.

Cheers,
David MacDonald



*Can**Adapt* *Solutions Inc.*

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On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 8:12 AM, Shwetank Dixit <shwetank@barrierbreak.com>
wrote:

> FWIW, I agree with John that character length is not a good criteria at
> all for this purpose, especially from the viewpoint of non-english
> languages. I believe the research and guidelines mentioned in this
> discussion have not included languages from scripts apart from the Latin
> script (please correct me if I’m wrong) like Devnagari, Gurkumikhi, or any
> from the CJK ones for example.
>
> I am especially concerned about the possibility of significantly increased
> ‘hyphenation’ that this could result in (which John also mentioned) causing
> bigger problems from a cognitive perspective.
> —
> Shwetank
>
>
> On Wednesday, Jan 11, 2017 at 4:32 PM, Michael Pluke <
> Mike.Pluke@castle-consult.com> wrote:
>
> I can see that the choice of characters as the unit of measurement can
> result in very different end-results that you get depending on the chosen
> font-size and font-face. This may make this unit less useful from an LV
> perspective.
>
>
>
> However I still think that, from a cognitive perspective, it is relevant
> and important to set a maximum line length in characters. Long lines with
> many words/characters are demonstrably hard to read for everyone but, most
> particularly for people with dyslexia.  The 80 characters in SC 1.4.8
> <https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-contrast-visual-presentation.html>
> will cause significant difficulties for many people with dyslexia.
>
>
>
> EA has quoted several research-based sources that offer realistic
> line-length proposals. From reading the extract from 'Dyslexia in the
> Digital Age' that EA linked-to (http://tinyurl.com/jra7hk3) I don’t think
> that it gives very strong evidence that 55 characters is the only choice.
> I’m a great fan of the realistic proposals that Luz Rello makes (based on
> her research (http://www.luzrello.com/Publications_files/uais2015.pdf))
> so I have confidence for specifying line lengths in the 44-66 range
> (although it was non-dyslexic people who benefitted most from 44 character
> columns). The British Dyslexia Style Guide http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/
> common/ckeditor/filemanager/userfiles/About_Us/policies/
> Dyslexia_Style_Guide.pdf recommends that “Lines should not be too long:
> 60 to70 characters.”
>
>
>
> *Conclusion*: Based on all of the above I think that:
>
>    - To benefit LV users we should avoid having SCs that give a line
>    length based on the number of characters;
>    - To benefit people with dyslexia (and also the general population)
>    the 1.4.8-based 80 character maximum in proposal #51
>    <https://github.com/w3c/wcag21/issues/51> should be reduced to a
>    figure no greater than 70 characters (and probably no less than 60).
>
>
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> *From:* John Foliot [mailto:john.foliot@deque.com]
> *Sent:* 10 January 2017 23:56
> *To:* David MacDonald <david100@sympatico.ca>
> *Cc:* WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
> *Subject:* Re: Length of line
>
>
>
> TL;DR - Using 'character' as a unit of measurement is extremely
> problematic, and I do not support it's use here.
>
>
>
> **************
>
>
>
> Some thoughts after today's call.
>
>
>
> I personally have significant concerns over prescribing a fixed number of
> characters, especially such a low number, as a unit of measurement.
>
>
>
> *Internationalization:*
>
> When we factor in both Internationalization and languages other than
> English, we will quickly arrive at a point where the number 25 is smaller
> than numerous words in different languages (https://en.wikipedia.org/
> wiki/Longest_words), which will then require word hyphenization (most
> probably supplied by the content author, until such time as AI can do that
> job seamlessly). This then suggests to me that we will start to see
> 'forced' line-breaks again (using the presentational <br>), which could
> have a significant impact on screen flow in RWD (Responsive) layouts (i.e.
> the cure being worse the the symptom).
>
>
>
>
>
> *Font-size and font-face choices:*
>
> Equally, as mentioned on the call, another factor in measuring this,
> related to horizontal scrolling, is font-size. For those of you using
> HTML-rich mail clients, and using a 25 character-count example taken from
> http://www.litscape.com/words/length/25_letters/25_letter_words.html:
>
>
>
> ​​
>
> electroencephalographical
>
> ​
>
> (Gmail's
>
> ​
>
> '
>
> ​
>
> S
>
> mall' sizing)​
>
> ​
>
> electroencephalographical      (Gmail's
>
> ​
>
> 'Normal' sizing)​
>
> ​
>
> electroencephalographical      (Gmail's
>
> ​
>
> 'Large' sizing)​
>
> ​
>
> electroencephalographical      (Gmail's
>
> ​
>
> 'Huge' sizing)​
>
>
>
> Q: How do we test for "success" here? Even the final line above (Gmail's
> "Huge" font-size) could introduce horizontal scrolling at some level of
> magnification on some devices, yet at 25 characters "meets" the current
> wording of the proposed SC.
>
>
>
> Additionally, different font-faces will have different font-width
> characteristics, depending on the font-face chosen. For example:
>
>
>
> ​
>
> electroencephalographical      (Gmail 'sans-serif', size 'normal')
>
> ​
>
> electroencephalographical    (Gmail 'Verdana', size 'normal')
>
> ​
>
> electroencephalographical     (Gmail 'Wide', size 'normal')
>
>
>
> ...once again, depending on the font-face choice we have 3 different
> line-lengths, and so I question the overall choice of "character" as a unit
> of measurement here.
>
>
>
>
>
> *How to 'Succeed'/Author push-back:*
>
> The current proposed language for this SC reads:
>
> For the visual presentation of all text, a mechanism is available such
> that line length is user adjustable, to 25 characters, with no
> two-dimensional scrolling required, and with the following exceptions.
>
>
>
> However, it is unclear what a page author can or should do to meet this
> requirement
>
> ​, as it very much feels like a User-Agent requirement as much as anything
> else. For SC 1.4.8, one technique is
>
> G204 <https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2016/WD-WCAG20-TECHS-20160105/G204>: *Not
> interfering with the user agent's reflow of text as the viewing window is
> narrowed*
>
> *​, *which​ seems to me to at least address the larger issue (avoid
> horizontal scrolling) without prescribing a specific line-length.
>
>
>
> Finally, the current Success Criteria that requires an 80 character
> line-length (
>
> SC 1.4.8
> <https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-contrast-visual-presentation.html>)
> is a AAA Success Criteria requirement, and yet this new proposed SC is at
> level A, at roughly 1/3 the 80-char limit.
>
> ​Sadly (but not totally unreasonably) ​
>
> I suspect that we will get significant push-back at level A
>
> ​.
>
>
>
> JF​
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 3:31 PM, David MacDonald <david100@sympatico.ca>
> wrote:
>
> I'm the manager of Issue #57 line length.
>
> https://github.com/w3c/wcag21/issues/57
>
> I was asked to explain why 25 characters was chosen as the threshold. I
> deferred to the LVTF
>
> ​ since I did not write that requirement​
>
> . One point that was mentioned was that 25 characters is about the width
> of most news article columns.
>
> I did a survey of several top news sites on the web and measured the
> length of characters when text size is 100% (no zoom)
>
> -CNN 74
>
> ​ ​
>
> characters without counting spaces 87 with spaces. could narrow to 35 (w/
> spaces) in Responsive
> -NBC 61 no spaces 73 with spaces, could narrow to 39 (w/ spaces)
> -ABC NEWS 81 no spaces 92 Spaces, could narrow to 43 in responsive
> -FoxNews 67 no space 79 spaces could narrow to 45 in responsive
> -Le Droit french 74 no space, 86 with spaces, no responsive
> -Google News 73 No Spaces 87 with spaces could narrow to 44 in responsive
> - Huff post French 67 no spaces 79 with spaces no responsive
>
> ​N
>
> one of these sites passed the new SC proposal of 25 characters. They all
> went to horizontal scroll when window was narrowed less than those
>
> ​minimum character ​
>
> widths shown above.
>
> ​Do we
>
>  want to make the minimum a little wider, say 45 or 50 characters.
>
> For reference, the following is about 25 characters:
>
>
> "This test assesses basic"
>
>
>
>
>
> Cheers,
> David MacDonald
>
>
>
> *Can**Adapt* *Solutions Inc.*
>
> Tel:  613.235.4902 <(613)%20235-4902>
>
> LinkedIn
> <http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmacdonald100>
>
> twitter.com/davidmacd
>
> GitHub <https://github.com/DavidMacDonald>
>
> www.Can-Adapt.com <http://www.can-adapt.com/>
>
>
>
> *  Adapting the web to all users*
>
> *            Including those with disabilities*
>
>
>
> If you are not the intended recipient, please review our privacy policy
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>
>
>
>
> --
>
> John Foliot
>
> Principal Accessibility Strategist
>
> Deque Systems Inc.
>
> john.foliot@deque.com
>
>
>
> Advancing the mission of digital accessibility and inclusion
>
>