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No matter the purpose your website is meant to serve, it must be ADA-accessible. If your website is ADA inaccessible, then you can receive an ADA lawsuit, which can, and will, greatly affect your finances. Going over the ways in which fonts can affect your website’s accessibility and speaking with an ADA accessibility lawyer if you have received a lawsuit will allow you to obtain the best possible legal outcome.

Can Certain Fonts Make Your Website ADA Inaccessible?

To answer the question outlined above, “Yes, certain fonts can make your website ADA inaccessible. But that’s not all: a variety of other choices related to the use of certain fonts can culminate in an ADA-inaccessible website.

Some of the most notable of these other choices are as follows:

Choose the appropriate colors for a particular font.
Make sure the color tone of a font contrasts with the color tone of a background.
Try to avoid overly flashy backgrounds.
Always make sure the text content is easy on the eyes.
Focus on content over design; the design should serve the text rather than the other way around.

Just as an example, if your fonts have a light color, then you should choose a dark background. This way, the fonts don’t blend with the background, which would make it more difficult for those with disabilities to read the text.

Outside of the above choices, there are, as stated at the beginning of this section, certain fonts that can make your website ADA inaccessible. But, more importantly, there are certain fonts that, if used in accordance with the basic guidelines clarified above, will guarantee that the text on your website is ADA-accessible.

Choosing The Right Fonts For ADA Accessibility

A variety of fonts are easy to read and, therefore, ADA-accessible.

Some of the most notable of these fonts are as follows:

Times New Roman
Helvetica
Arial
Open Sans
Georgia
Calibri
Verdana

Every single one of these fonts is easy to read and, therefore, accessible. Right after converting the text on your website to these fonts, though, you must make sure that the text is easy to read from a design perspective.

If the text is easy to read, and the design suits the text and its readability, then there is only one more thing to do: you must make sure every other facet of your website is:

Perceivable
Understandable
Operable.
Robust.

Every single one of these conditions must be met in order for your website to be considered ADA-accessible.

Just as an example, your website must, in order to be considered robust, be compatible with common assistive technologies.

As another example, your website must offer alternative image text and closed captioning/transcripts in order for it to be considered understandable.

Other features may need to be added to your website, but those outlined above, coupled with the use of easy-to-read fonts and effective design choices, will make your website ADA-accessible.