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Re: Font size and Italics in PDFs

for

From: Ryan E. Benson
Date: Oct 26, 2011 9:00PM

Dan,
As part of HHS, we don't have a recommended size, we only have
recommended font faces. Those are: Cambria, Calibri, Verdana, Arial,
Tahoma, Helvetica and Times New Roman. These fonts don't distort when
you zoom in on it, or reflow the PDF, as Andrew said.

> And is italicized text something that should only be done sparingly?
If italicized text is hard to read, try another font. Fancy fonts but
plain fonts, I think Georgia is one, can get hard to read in italic
and sometimes plain, this is due to all the little loop-de-loo's that
are added. These tend to make the characters bleed together.

> "be sure to use a large enough font size"-type of language
This allows people to use their judgement. Thinking about questions I
get at work, if we put something say use 14 point everywhere, somebody
will come back and say that makes us use ___ more pages a year, and we
need to be more green.

--
Ryan E. Benson



On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 6:00 AM, Andrew Kirkpatrick < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Dan,
> If you tag your PDFs properly, not only can users zoom in to increase the text size, but they can enable reflow of the text so the text wraps within the confines of the current window.  So, font size shouldn't be too small, but people reading the PDF can adjust it.
>
> Thanks,
> AWK
>
> Andrew Kirkpatrick
> Group Product Manager, Accessibility
> Adobe Systems
>
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> http://twitter.com/awkawk
> http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Malosh, Dan (MDE)
> Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 1:02 PM
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: [WebAIM] Font size and Italics in PDFs
>
> Hi all,
>
> This is my first posting to the list so I apologize if what I'm asking has been addressed numerous times in the past.
>
> I am working on converting Word documents into PDFs (I have Word 2010 and Acrobat Pro X) and I am concerned about font sizes.  My agency has us using a font size 11 for general text, and has no qualms about italicized text.  As I create these PDFs, I am concerned about people with low or partial vision.
>
> Is there an agreed upon font size for PDFs?  And is italicized text something that should only be done sparingly?  Does Section 508 and/or W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative address font sizes for PDFs directly?  I find those sites painful to navigate and to read, and what little I have found addressing PDFs and printable documents is vague ("be sure to use a large enough font size"-type of language).
>
> I know that it's best to use HTML whenever possible because the end user can change the font size to their liking, but for information that people may want to print, PDF seems to be the preferred format.
>
> I would appreciate any feedback I can get from you experts and accessibility enthusiasts.
>
> Thanks in advance.
> Sincerely,
> -Dan
>
> Dan Malosh, Digital Reference Librarian
> Minnesota Braille & Talking Book Library
>
>