RE: Adapting Text Units: Spaces, paragraphs, and ems

Hi John,

That’s actually incorrect with regard to letter and word spacing.  It’s a factor on font size (height in your proposal) just like the rest.  Given that “font height” is not language used in any spec or software I’m aware of, I think we should stick to “font size”, which is universally understood.

I still have concerns about testability and the need for testing it at all, but we can see what the public says.  One change that I do think we need to make is to remove the “(2 lines)” from the 2nd bullet.  It makes it seem like a “line” is equal to the font size, which is not true.  Simplify to:

2. spacing underneath paragraphs to at least 2 times the font size

Steve

From: John Foliot [mailto:john.foliot@deque.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2017 5:17 PM
To: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>
Cc: Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com>; Repsher, Stephen J <stephen.j.repsher@boeing.com>; lisa.seeman <lisa.seeman@zoho.com>; Greg Lowney <gcl-0039@access-research.org>; public-low-vision-a11y-tf <public-low-vision-a11y-tf@w3.org>; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Re: Adapting Text Units: Spaces, paragraphs, and ems

Hi Laura,

I still have lingering concerns about measuring... how about this (very) minor edit:

1. line height (line spacing) to at least 1.5 times the font height.
2. spacing underneath paragraphs to at least 2 times the font height (2 lines).
3. letter spacing (tracking) to at least 0.12 times the font width.
4. word spacing to at least 0.16 times the font width.

...as being more precise and explicit.

Thoughts anyone?

JF

On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 3:45 PM, Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com<mailto:laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Alastair, Stephen, John, David, Lisa, Greg, and Everyone,

Thank you Alastair!

After reading Alastair's proposal for the paragraph bullet [1], does
anyone think that it is not testable?

Incorporating it into the SC we would have:

<Start SC Text>

If the technologies being used allow the user agent to adapt style
properties of text, then no loss of essential content or functionality
occurs by adapting all of the following:

1. line height (line spacing) to at least 1.5 times the font size.
2. spacing underneath paragraphs to at least 2 times the font size (2 lines).
3. letter spacing (tracking) to at least 0.12 times the font size.
4. word spacing to at least 0.16 times the font size.

Note: Examples of text that are typically not affected by style
properties are open captions and images of text, which are not
expected to adapt.

Editor's note: The Working Group seeks to include overriding text
color, background color, and font-family as part of this SC, but is
not yet able to identify a way to do so that is sufficiently testable.

<End SC Text>

Can anyone not live with that?

Thanks everyone.

Kindest Regards,
Laura

[1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2017JulSep/0096.html

On 7/13/17, Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com<mailto:acampbell@nomensa.com>> wrote:
> The paragraphs one is tricky but I think it would be testable if it was
> asking for 2ems (lines) underneath each paragraph.
>
> 2. Spacing underneath paragraphs to at least 2 times the font size (2
> lines).
>
> (Is the term “below” or “after” better?)
>
> Therefore, the answers for each of Stephen’s questions would be:
>
>
>   1.  Which paragraph’s font size do I base the spacing on?
> A: The one above the space.
>
>   2.  Is it spacing before or after or split between the two?
> A: After only.
>
>   3.  Does a heading or sub-heading count as a paragraph?  Seems like that
> would be a much bigger distinguisher so I’m assuming no.
> A: No. I assume it is a gap in terms of what users would want though?
>
>   4.  What if a list, block quote, image, or other element breaks up a
> paragraph?  This becomes an important difference depending on the answers to
> 1 and 2.
> A: Then it is two paragraphs, and it shouldn’t break if you add a margin to
> the bottom of each paragraph.
>
>   5.  If a paragraph has another visual distinction like a first line indent
> or border, is the spacing requirement the same?
> A: Yes (I assume that is the desired requirement).
>
> The CSS to test it for HTML would simply be:
> p {margin-bottom: 2em !important;}
>
> Specifying ‘underneath’ also gets around the collapsing margins aspect of
> CSS which I’m sure would raise many questions/issues! (That’s where the
> bottom-margin of one element and the top-margin of next element are not
> simply added together, it uses the higher value of the two and the rest is
> ‘collapsed’.)
>
> Stephen wrote:
>> In the end though, I’m having a tough time seeing how a test for paragraph
>> spacing could ever really fail in the context of this criterion
>
> I agree, I’m not sure it’s adding anything of value to end users. Not that
> having lots of spacing between paragraphs is not useful, just that it won’t
> find many issues.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -Alastair
>

--
Laura L. Carlson



--
John Foliot
Principal Accessibility Strategist
Deque Systems Inc.
john.foliot@deque.com<mailto:john.foliot@deque.com>

Advancing the mission of digital accessibility and inclusion