In today’s article, I am going to tell you Why Accessible Fonts Are Essential In Web Design? so if you want to know about it, then keep reading this article. Because I am going to give you complete information about it, so let’s start.
Web designing involves creating a website by incorporating different aspects like graphic design, layout, and content production. When creating your website, you need to be mindful of typography. This is essentially the style and appearance of your website.
You’d want to choose a font size that all website visitors will enjoy reading without much struggle, otherwise known as an accessible font. It’s crucial that you realize that some font sizes will deter you from achieving web accessibility, especially if they’re too tiny, unclear, or embellished.
Examples of accessible fonts that you can use on your website include Calibri, Times New Roman, Arial, Helvetica, and Verdana. Factors like color, contrast, and size also significantly determine whether your font is accessible or not.
Today’s article focuses on the same,i.e, “Why Accessible Fonts Are Essential In Web Design”. The articles entail each bit of information necessary for you to know.
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Table of Contents
Why Accessible Fonts Are Essential In Web Design?
Here are some of the reasons why using accessible fonts is essential in web design:
1. They Enhance Readability
Choosing legible font sizes makes reading and understanding your website’s content easier for the audience. Remember, how you present the text on your web page plays a crucial role in determining its readability.
Your web users should be able to quickly get the message you’re trying to convey. In as much as you may not make the best choice in terms of font style, ensure that you choose a good font size. This will keep your readers from straining their eyes. You’d also want to avoid a situation where your web visitors have to zoom in to be able to read the content on your website.
To elaborate further, it’s essential to realize that your website design context should serve as your guide for choosing the most suitable font size. An example is when you’re designing a business card and a poster concurrently. Since a business card is just meant for one person, you can use a small font size; but, for a poster, you may have to choose a larger font size as it’s meant to be seen by a bigger audience.
So, regarding web design, it’s good to keep in mind that you’re publishing content for both large-screen and mobile phone users. Thus, it’s advisable to use font sizes that aren’t less than 16 pixels for titles and headings, and 10 pixels for the body.
As long as you use accessible fonts when designing your website, you’re sure your website will generate more traffic and rank higher in the search engines. The reason is that there’s a high likelihood of web users visiting a readable website and even refer others to check it out.
If you’re unsure whether you’ve chosen the right font size for your website, you can try doing a practice check while making necessary adjustments to your content. If, over time, you realize that mobile phone users are struggling to read your content, affecting the website’s overall performance, try changing the font to better meet your audience’s needs and improve their experience.
2. They Help Achieve Consistency
There’s nothing as discouraging as reading content from a website whose fonts are inaccessible. As a user, you’ll lose your morale as you try to understand the web designer’s message since there’s no consistency in their font choice.
Some characteristics of an inaccessible font include:
- Overlapping letters or characters, thus, it becomes difficult to separate the letters from one another
- Complicated shapes of different letters make it a hassle to distinguish them
- Has adornments and decorations that seem unnecessary
- Specialty fonts, like the custom-made or hand-written ones
You need to maintain simplicity when designing your website, especially when choosing your typography fonts. You’d not want your readers to struggle reading what you’ve written because they’ll eventually lose interest, regardless of the quality of your content.
Another critical aspect that helps maintain the consistency and aesthetics of your website is sticking to one font style. The font sizes can vary depending on the content (headings and body). However, it’s best to shun using a decorative font on the subheadings and headings, and then use an accessible font, like Arial, on the body. This can be a major turn-off to your audience. So, to maintain the readers’ interest and achieve consistency, it’d be best to use a specific type of accessible font throughout your content.
3. Accessible Fonts Enhance Your Website Branding
As a business owner, you must employ all the necessary strategies to help build your brand image and attract as many potential customers as possible to your business. One way to do this is to design your website well and ensure that you maintain it.
One effective way of ensuring good web design is by using accessible fonts. As long as customers have marked your site as having clear and accessible information, you can be sure that they’ll be loyal to your business. So, while at the initial stages of web design, if it’s not a DIY project, ensure that you hire a professional web designer to do the work for you.
Moreover, it’s vital that you insist that they shouldn’t overlook the font size and style aspects (typeface) since these will determine whether your clients will be motivated to stay or they’ll shift to other service providers.
One thing that most business owners don’t know is that the font can affect the overall mood of the reader. So, you should strive as much as possible to impress your audience if you want to grow your brand and expand to larger markets. Thus, your primary focus shouldn’t be just creating a lot of content, but using a proper design with accessible fonts to improve your readers’ mood. Your content shouldn’t have to be lengthy, as long as it’s clearly presented and directly conveys your message to your audience.
4. They’re Time-Saving
Sometimes, your readers may not be in a position to read every single word of your web content. The reason is that they’re probably busy or need the information immediately, like an answer to a certain question.
So, you need to use accessible fonts that’ll help your reader quickly scan or skim through your content. You can help your readers achieve this by using more distinguished font headings. That way, they’ll be able to have a rough idea of what each section under the subheading talks about. Unfortunately, most website designers haven’t mastered the importance of using this strategy, slowing down the readers’ pace.
Another thing is that you need to avoid using font sizes that are less than 12pt if you want to help your readers to easily skim through your content. That’ll make it easier and faster for them to see the target keywords they’re looking for and the information they need at the moment.
Other ways to enhance the pace of your readers through accessible fonts include:
- Getting rid of moving or blinking texts
- Avoiding many font variations on one page, for example, using italics, capital letters, and bold characters in one sentence
Always remember that time is of the essence when designing your website; thus, you need to incorporate strategies to help your readers save as much time as they can when reading your content.
5. They Cater To The Visually Impaired
Using accessible fonts can help people with disabilities to navigate and even contribute to your website. Just like there’s been a call for builders to incorporate ramps for people using wheelchairs, you also need to use fonts that people with disabilities can read without much hassle.
Examples of visual disability include short-sightedness, low vision, and color blindness. For further understanding, it’s important to realize that people with low vision may have a tunnel or clouded vision and poor acuity. What this means is that you need to use an accessible font so that they don’t have to strain to open their eyes when they try to read your content.
You can stick to a black font color with a large size (around 16 pt) to help these people read more easily. A person with clouded vision won’t have many challenges reading such a text as compared to when they’re reading content in bright colors, like red, green, and yellow.
Totally blind people can consider using Web-Braille. If you’re a designer of these unique Braille displays for the legally blind, you also need to ensure that you use the best fonts that the users can easily recognize by touch.
Conclusion:)
When developing your website, your main aim should be to create readable content that your audience can easily read. One way of doing this is using appropriate font sizes and font styles, otherwise known as accessible fonts. Proper spacing and suitable font colors are crucial aspects you must take into account as well. These are factors that’d help you create an effective website that’ll ensure a positive user experience every single time.
A web design that utilizes accessible fonts can help your readers save time by easily finding the information they need. Also, even people with mild visual problems will be able to read your content. Most importantly, these fonts help in enhancing your brand image. By achieving these things, your website can gain more traffic and will have a better chance of ranking high on search engine results pages.
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