Accessability, DDA and font

[boxhead]

I have looked through the DDA (UK) to see if there are any rules/guidelines around which font to use, but cannot find anything other than the size.

Are their any laws or guidelines i should use? I usually use the Arial family, but someone is telling me:

'It should be a member of the Arial or Helvetica family or similar with a Sans Serif style'

cheers for your comments

monkey

[SloppyJay]

The CNIB did a study a few years back called Clear Print. It deals mostly with print standards but I think the concepts are quite transferable to digital.

We found Verdana to be quite legible and easy for a majority of users. Arial used to be our standard.

While both are legible Arial was found to be too narrow and Verdana has a great width to the letters.

[AutisticCuckoo]

Fonts developed for on-screen use are usually more legible than traditional print fonts. Verdana is a very common sanserif, while Georgia is a good serif.

[C. Ankerstjerne]

Verdana does have a few problems (e.g. rn vs. m and cl vs d) for small text sizes, but is still my primary font choice for text.

I often use a serif font for headlines (usually Georgia as the primary font), as I feel it gives an interesting look. Since the headlines are significantly larger than the normal text, the problems associated with the low resolution of monitors does not exist.

Just be sure to specify a font family, when you specify the font, e.g.

p {
  font-family: verdana, sans-serif;
}
 
h1, h2 {
  font-family: georgia, serif;
}