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WAI: Strategies, guidelines, resources to make the Web accessible to people with disabilities

Text Customization for Readability
Online Symposium 19 November 2012

Page Contents

Introduction

This symposium brings together researchers, practitioners, and users with disabilities to explore the needs of people with low vision, dyslexia, and other conditions and situations that impact reading. It promotes new research, ongoing research, and analysis of past research related to text customization for readability. The goal is to encourage user agent developers, standards developers, policy makers, web designers, and others to provide specific functionality in mainstream web products by helping them better understand and implement text customization.

See Participating below for how you can register and contribute to the Symposium.

Dates

Background

Many people need to be able to customize text in order to read effectively. Aspects of text formatting that users need to customize include: text size, text color and background color, font face, leading/line spacing, linearization/reflow, kerning, letter spacing, word spacing, line length, text style, justification, and more — including changes to all text and changes at the element level (e.g., headings different from body text).

However, there are few resources that provide clear guidance on text customization. Additionally, most of this customization has not been well integrated in mainstream user agents (web browsers, etc.), nor is it sufficiently included in some accessibility standards and support material (such as the Section 508 standards).

One reason for lack of sufficient text customization functionality may be a lack of awareness of and research on users' needs. This symposium aims to address that gap.

User Group

This symposium focuses on a specific group of people with print disabilities: those who can see and can read, but have difficulty reading text in common designs and thus need to specify different text characteristics in order to read effectively. It includes:

The primary focus is on people who use mainstream technologies and do not regularly use assistive technologies (AT), such as screen magnification. Some people do not use AT because the functionality does not meet their needs, poor usability, complexity, cost, availability, or other factors. For example, some people do not use screen magnification because while they need to increase text size to read, they do not want to increase images or other screen elements; and some need text to wrap to avoid horizontal scrolling — functionality that most screen magnification software does not provide. Research with AT users can inform how to meet the needs of this user group.

Objectives

The objectives of this symposium are to:

Proceedings

Research Papers:

Position Papers:

Tool Papers:

Additional comments, questions, and contributions are in the RDWG comments e-mail archive from November 2012.

Participating

You can participate in the symposium in several ways:

We hope to address all questions and comments raised during the symposium although we cannot guarantee we will get to each one.

Registration

Registration for participating by phone is closed.

To participate by chat and live captioning (per above), you do not need to register.

Participants are expected to read the papers in the Proceedings above before the symposium.

Agenda

15:00-17:00 UTC (times in different locations)

  1. Introduction to topic and symposium (15:00-15:10)
  2. Understanding text customization needs and requirements (15:10-15:45)
    1. What aspects of text customization improve readability? How do they help?
    2. Which aspects of text customization are necessary requirements for people to be able to read effectively, and which are optional suggestions to improve readability?
    3. What are the gaps in knowledge of users' needs for text customization?
  3. Integrating text customization functionality and requirements (15:45-16:05)
    1. How well do existing text customization functionality and interfaces support users' needs?
      • What text customization functionality is provided in current products?
      • How do users interact with text customization features? Which do they use, which do they not use, and why?
    2. How effectively do user agents (web browsers, etc.) and web content share the responsibility for text customization?
  4. Moving forward (16:05-16:50)
    1. How might we increase awareness of the need for text customization, and the benefits?
    2. What text customization functionality should be included in products in order to meet users' needs?
    3. How can we improve discoverability and usability of text customization features in products?
    4. How should text customization requirements be better addressed in accessibility guidelines, web standards, and other best practice guides?
    5. What areas of research show promise to inform and evolve text customization for readability?
  5. Next steps - Symposium Report, Invitation for additional short contributions (16:50-17:00)

Notifications

To get notification of updated information on this and other RDWG symposia, see Getting WAI Announcements.

Organization

The Text Customization for Readability symposium is organized by the W3C WAI Research and Development Working Group (RDWG). For information about RDWG, see the RDWG FAQ. If you have additional questions, contact Shadi Abou-Zahra (W3C Staff Contact).

Symposium Chairs

Scientific Committee