Accessible Typefaces, Fonts, and Text: Optimizing the reading experience

Most of our time online is typically spent reading text, yet we don't often consider how accessible that text is. The typefaces, fonts, and text styling used can have a significant impact on the user experience — and there are few accessibility guidelines that relate to text accessibility. This session will provide an overview of how reading is processed in the human mind, and how to minimize the cognitive effort and maximize the visual accessibility of online text.

For most people, the human mind is incredibly adept at reading text. Once sufficient reading skills are achieved the brain can quickly form mental models for texts. This allows us to avoid the visual parsing of distinct letters and even words, so we instead quickly process blocks of character and word shapes and patterns almost instantaneously into meaning.

Typography, font, and text styling choices can significantly impact this, thus slowing reading speed, interfering with text-to-meaning conversions, and increasing cognitive processing that could otherwise be utilized by the reader. This presentation will help participants understand the reading processes, and provide distinct recommendations and suggestions for optimal typography and text presentation.