RE: Stipulating fonts or not to stipulate.

As an artist I am sure you comply to the conventions of the medium you are
working with.  An artist would not use the same techniques on a water color
painting as they would with oils unless he had a specific reason to do so.

The Web has its own set of techniques and conventions.  It was designed as a
medium of communication which could be read in many forms to present
information in a hyper linked environment.  A web page is not...or at least
should not be a representation of a printed page pasted on the web.

Fonts are fine. There is definitely a place for the use of fonts in web
pages but that place is in a separate Style Sheet.  Web pages should
separate content and presentation.

Many people may wish to change the font or size. They are not too lazy to
view a web site without additional software they are just doing what they
should do if web Designers were not too lazy to learn and use correct
techniques instead of using the techniques of other media.

For some details on how fonts can affect readability see
http://www.lighthouse.org/.

Harry Woodrow

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On
Behalf Of Paul Davis
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2001 6:53 PM
To: W3c-Wai-Ig@W3. Org
Subject: Stipulating fonts or not to stipulate.


Hi All,

Confession time. I may be going over old ground here but please exercise
some patience for a pooh bear.

I have accepted that many people do not like separate pages for text
readers.........................fine. I am aware of the arguments and can
see the logic in them, whilst I feel that this does restrict the artist in
me, it is prepared to be restricted. (Commercial hat on here)

But I do have a problem with fonts, there was, a little while back a thread
on fonts and I have spent the week-end re-reading the emails. However the
more I look at pages where no font is stipulated the less I like 'em.

Frankly I think they look awful. In fact I would go further and say I hate
'em.

Is there an accessibility reason that <FONT face="geneva, arial, helvetica,
sans serif"> should not be used? or to put it another way is there any
software, text reader or browser that has a problem with this? I can see no
reason why they should have a problem, but then I am a self taught hack, not
a highly trained expert. The main justification I can think off for not
stipulating fonts is the partially sighted who hate using software to assist
in reading pages, is there another or more important reason please? If I
make the decision to force these people to either use their software or
leave the site would this then be construed as rendering the site
inaccessible?

Is this then not an argument for a separate page to help out if, when and
where difficulties arise?

As this is close to a subject that was done too death a few weeks back it
may be better to reply off list!!!!

smiles
Paul Davis

Received on Monday, 29 October 2001 06:38:42 UTC