Talk Description:
Typographer vs. Accessibility
Designing for accessibility sucks 😩! It is limiting creative expression, making things look ugly, and is mostly for the blind anyway. But is that really true? How can sublime typography and accessibility go hand in hand?
In this talk, Oliver confronts himself with his own misconceptions as a designer and type nerd. Is 16 px the required minimum font size? Is high contrast necessary? Should you really avoid serif typefaces? And is Comic Sans best for dyslexic readers (while being the worst for everyone else)?
In a fun, engaging session, Oliver takes an often overwhelming and fuzzy topic for creatives and breaks it down. You will walk away inspired 🤩 with practical guidelines on how you can set the text of your next design project beautifully accessible, to reach and convince more people.
Workshop Description:
Accessible Typography for Web & UI Design, Workshop
How can you best combine sublime typography with web accessibility? This fun and practical workshop gives you clear guidelines for a seemingly too fuzzy area. Learn how to set the text in your design projects beautifully accessible, making it reach and convince more people, while meeting legal requirements.
Great typography meets accessibility
Typography is fundamental to web and UI design, but with its many rules and conventions it can often be overwhelming. Web Accessibility is a common requirement, but the guidelines can feel very complicated and fuzzy, when it comes to visual design. This workshop combines both topics in a way visual designers can understand and apply them. Instead of thinking of it as a hurdle or limitation, learn to see accessibility requirements as another source of inspiration.
The workshop covers:
- Which WCAG requirements (success criteria) matter for visual design.
- How to assess if a typeface is accessible.
- Which contrast requirements are crucial.
- What are the best font sizes.
- The ideal line length, line height and letter spacing.
- Suggestions of handy tools, plugins and resources.
- Short exercises, letting you apply what you just learned, right away.
- If you want to, bring your own project and get feedback.
You will get answers to questions like:
- What’s the required minimum font size?
- Should you mainly use sans-serif fonts?
- Should you design for AA or AAA?
- Do all of your links need to be underlined?
- What’s the difference between active and focus states?
- Are darkmode or high contrast themes needed?
- Is it required to have a minimum line-height of 1.5?
- Are Comic Sans or Open Dsylexic (😱) best for dyslexic readers?
For whom this workshop is
This workshop is specifically aimed towards visual designers, UI, app, or graphic designers – however you wanna call yourself 😉. It will not be technical, so not about HTML elements or providing alt tags. It is a deep dive into typography and accessibility, not accessible web design in general. The goal of the workshop is taking the weight out of an often overwhelming and fuzzy topic, and breaking it down into practical, usable steps.
What you’ll need
Your own computer and a free Figma account for doing the exercises.