Font Choice

Summary

Finding the Right Family

The font(s) that you choose to use in your document can have a significant impact on the document's legibility. When choosing your font(s), start by determining if you want to use a serif font or a san serif font for your most important information or paragraph text.

• Serif Font: These fonts are characterized by serifs or extra flares--sometimes referred to as feet--at the end of each stroke (i.e. each line that makes up the letters). Also, these fonts tend to use lines with varying thicknesses to form the letters. Serif fonts include Minion, Times New Roman, Cambria, Georgia, Baskerville, Garamond, and Courier. Some other serif fonts will include "Serif" (without the "San" or "Sans") in their name.
• San Serif Font: Literally meaning "without serif," these fonts do not have the serif flares and generally have the strokes of consistent thickness. San serif fonts include Helvetica, Arial, Calibri, Tahoma, Myriad, Verdana, Open Sans, Lucida Sans Typewriter, and Comic Sans. Some other san serif fonts will include "San" or "Sans" in their name.

Given that the American Printing House for the Blind, Inc. Links to an external site. encourages the use of san serif fonts for printed paragraph text, we will be encouraging that practice as well. However, most of the studies that we were able to find that compared the legibility of these font families have either been outdated; indecisive; or unreliable (see Resources). If you're not confident in your choice of font family, consider keeping an easily customize-able electronic copy of your document ready for distribution upon request. Easily customize-able formats include HTML, ePub (to a degree), and Text Editor file formats (.doc, .rtf, .odt). PDFs are generally not a flexible enough format.

Going Beyond the Family

After you have chosen a font family, look for fonts with the following qualities:

• Visually distinguishable differences between lowercase L, uppercase i, the letter j, the Roman numeral Ⅰ, and the number 1.
• A lower case g that doesn't consist of two circles.
• Bubbles or circles--in letters like b, p, and g-- that have adequate spacing.
• Solid strokes with no gaps.
• Font names that do not include "Light," "Lite," "Semi-light," "Condensed," "Narrow," or "Compressed."
  • Usually, font names including "Script" should also be avoided, particularly those with cursive lettering.

In the san serif font family, Verdana, Tahoma, and Helvetica are pretty good fonts, as far as these criteria are concerned. 

• For important information and paragraph text, many monospace fonts may be usable but their equal-width characters (i.e. letters, numbers, spaces, etc.) can be difficult for some to read.
• The use of light and condensed fonts are discouraged because light fonts have strokes that are too thin and condensed fonts have letters that are too close together.
• Some persons with dyslexia have found Comic Sans easier to read, but we are not encouraging that all text be written in Comic Sans.
• Heading or Title text can play by different rules. See Headings, Table of Contents, and References for more information.
• While outside the scope of this guide, if you are installing permanent signage (for rooms, utilities, etc.), please refer to Section 703 of the ADAAG Links to an external site. when choosing an appropriate font.