Re: Unclear Requirement: 1.4.12 Text Spacing

Hi Erica,

The website does not need to use that text spacing by default. The website just needs to work when users change their text spacing.

Understanding Success Criterion 1.4.12: Text Spacing <https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/text-spacing.html> says:
* The intent of this Success Criterion (SC) is to ensure that people can override author specified text spacing to improve their reading experience.
* This SC does not dictate that authors must set all their content to the specified metrics. Rather, it specifies that an author's content has the ability to be set to those metrics without loss of content or functionality.

It would be good to edit that Understanding page to be even more clear.
*Do you want to provide suggestions?* :)
Best if you can provide them via GitHub <https://github.com/w3c/wcag/issues/new>. If you're not comfortable with GitHub, you can send e-mail to public-agwg-comments@w3.org

I've also updated <https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/new-in-21/#1412-text-spacing-aa>:
[[
Problem: "Most text is hard to read. It's so cluttered I can't keep my focus. Just increasing the space between lines makes all the difference. When I'm really tired, I also increase the space between words. However, some websites don't work right -- some of the text gets cut off and even buttons disappear."

Works well: "OK, I know I'm a bit of a geek, but I've perfected a user style sheet to make text spacing just right for me. It's a relief when websites work well with my CSS."
]]

Best,
Shawn
<http://www.w3.org/People/Shawn/>



On 13-Aug-20 9:21 AM, Erica Price wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> First of all, love what you do! Just had a quick question.
> 
> *Intent*
> I would like to have a discussion about requirement 1.4.12 Text Spacing. I've seen 3 groups people interpret the success of this criteria differently. I do believe clarification would be helpful.
> 
> *Main Questions*
> Are these styles defaults for every website or do these styles need to be supported? Is there a middle ground to this? Do we need to provide the user with the capability to change these styles or do we rely on them to know how to implement via plugin, bookmarklet, or manual css etc and simply support the style changes?"
> 
> *Reference Requirement: 1.4.12 Text Spacing*
> In content implemented using markup languages that support the following text style properties, no loss of content or functionality occurs by setting all of the following and by changing no other style property:
> - Line height (line spacing) to at least 1.5 times the font size;
> - Spacing following paragraphs to at least 2 times the font size;
> - Letter spacing (tracking) to at least 0.12 times the font size;
> - Word spacing to at least 0.16 times the font size.
> 
> -- 
> *Erica Price *
> Senior Product Designer
> 
>

Received on Friday, 14 August 2020 17:42:34 UTC