You ever try reading a wall of text with the lines practically glued together? I have — and I do this for a living. By the second paragraph, your eyes start squinting, and your brain just taps out. Now imagine trying to read that while using a screen magnifier or dealing with dyslexia. That’s not just annoying — it’s exclusion.
And if your website looks like that, you may be in violation of the ADA.
What Text Spacing Has to Do with ADA Compliance
The Americans with Disabilities Act requires that digital content be accessible — and that includes the way text is spaced. We’re talking about:
- Line height (the space between lines of text)
- Letter spacing
- Word spacing
- Paragraph spacing
This isn’t design fluff. These settings affect how real people — especially those with visual or cognitive impairments — are able to process and read your content.
The WCAG 2.1 guidelines outline minimum spacing requirements. If your site doesn’t allow for those adjustments, you may be exposing yourself to complaints or lawsuits. I’ve defended businesses in exactly this situation — and it’s usually because no one realized the formatting mattered this much.
Where Most Websites Go Wrong
I see these common problems in site audits:
- Text is jammed together with line spacing under 1.5
- Long paragraphs with no breaks or visual rest points
- No option to resize or reflow text for assistive tech
- Fonts that lose clarity when spacing is adjusted
- Layouts that collapse or break when line spacing increases
These may sound like design oversights, but under the ADA, they’re access issues. If someone with low vision or dyslexia can’t adjust spacing to comfortably read your content, they’re not getting equal access.
And that’s when the demand letters start coming in.
What WCAG Requires — And What the ADA Expects
Here’s the technical part — boiled down:
- Line height must be at least 1.5x the font size
- Paragraph spacing should be 2x the font size
- Letter spacing should be at least 0.12x
- Word spacing should be at least 0.16x
These are baseline settings. But the real requirement is this: your website must not break when someone increases these values using a browser extension or custom stylesheet.
That’s the part many businesses miss — and it’s where compliance falls apart.
A Real Example That Hit Close to Home
I once helped a small publishing company that ran a high-traffic blog. The text looked fine at first glance — but when a user increased spacing using an accessibility tool, the layout collapsed. Text overlapped images. Buttons disappeared. They got flagged in a screen reader audit and reached out to us when they received a formal complaint.
We worked with their developers to adjust the HTML and CSS to preserve structure — without changing their brand look. One week of cleanup. Problem solved. Lawsuit avoided.
Here’s What I Tell Clients
If your content looks great to you but breaks down for someone adjusting spacing, you’ve got a liability. It’s not enough that your text is legible. It needs to be flexible — and your layout needs to support it.
Our ADA defense law firm helps business owners spot these risks before they become legal claims. If you’re not sure how your site handles text spacing or whether it’s accessible to all users, we can take a look.
Contact us here — before someone else does.
