Text styling

Accessible text styling helps make digital content easier to see and read. The font, style, size, and case used for text can greatly affect the legibility of a website or document.

Use common, preferably sans serif, fonts for paragraph text. Examples of sans serif fonts include Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, Roboto, and Verdana.

Overuse of text styles can make content harder to read. Try to use no more than three different fonts in a document or webpage.

Limit the use of italic, bold, and underlined text. It is okay to use bold or italics sparingly for emphasis, but do not use visual styling to convey meaning. Screen readers and other assistive technology often do not indicate whether text is bold, so an assignment asking readers to “define the bolded words in the following text passage” would not be accessible.

Avoid using all-caps casing. All-caps text produces letters that are all at the same line height, which makes it more difficult to distinguish letters from one another.

• Use plain, sans serif fonts for paragraph text
• Use at least 12 pt font size
• Limit the use of italic, bold, and underlined text
• Avoid using all-caps