subject: Choosing The Correct Text For Websites [print this page] Web designing for all kinds of audiences is a tricky affair. The target audience may comprise of differently able people. In fact, it is calculated that disabled persons make up approximately ten percent of the population. A web designing professional will design websites that cater to all segments of the population.
Words or text in a website is the most important component of a website. Text should be accessible to all. It is not so simple. Individuals who are blind are unable to read what is visible on the monitor and make do with specialized software like screen readers. A web design Sydney professional utilizes a few ground rules to convey the desired message to the user.
For a website design expert, color and contrast in regard to text is of vital concern. Text should be displayed at the highest contrast possible. For this reason, most of the textual content is set in a white background. Black text over a white background is extremely conductive to reading.
As every website service provider knows, older people have trouble differentiating between one shades of color from another. This is particularly true of the color blue. The experience becomes amplified when it comes to small blue text. People beyond a certain age find it extremely hard to read small blue letters. In many cases, they become virtually unreadable. Thus, blue color should not be chosen as the text color of the website.
In case of font size, it is obvious that large type is more readable than small type. Web design Sydney professionals recommend that in case of screen text, a 12-point type is a minimum requirement. Studies have shown that text fonts of 16 points or 18 points are ideal for readers who are visually disabled. But a corollary here: the relationship between point size and readability is dissimilar among dissimilar typefaces.
When it comes to typefaces, website design specialists' advice the website owner to continue using the most commonly used typefaces. The lists of suitable typefaces include the Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, Serif, Sans-Serif and Times New Roman. For optimal results, set three to four typefaces in FONT tags or CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) settings. Therefore, if your first choice of typeface selection is not available, the second, third or fourth selection can be used by the browser that is being used by the visitor. It is a common practice to choose one typeface exclusively for headings and another typeface for the main content body text.
According to web design Sydney professionals, in the case of text styles, it is better to not use italic, oblique or condensed text. This is because these styles lower the readability of the text. It is preferable to highlight text in bold. Using italics to highlight text is not recommended. Another point to note is that the web designing professional should use the ".... logical style tag in contrast to the bold .. physical style tag. When it comes to the spacing between letters, it is recommended that the spacing should be wide to help persons with limited visual abilities.
