Issue 78 "Spacing" Status Report
Abstract:
This document provides a status report on the "Spacing" Success Criterion (SC) - GitHub Issue 78 - to the WCAG Working Group, January 17, 2017.
The SC is about spacing adjustment. A person with low vision needs to be able to change spacing in order to read content.
The original SC has "Mechanism is available" language that gives a misconception that widgets are required. That was not the aim. This SC is not about spacing widgets. It has been about letting people with low vision who use desktop browsers apply their own stylesheets without authors introducing barriers.
The SC is supported via user stylesheets in 2 browsers (IE and Safari). However, because of CSS specificity users must look at the code and hunt down author classes and ids associated with all elements on the page, then build CSS rules to make a page readable.This is very onerous for users. Mobile does not provide support.
The way forward currently does not have consensus. Disagreement exists on:
- SC Language
- Level
- What authors should be expected to do (per a related Font Family thread on the WCAG WG list).
The Low Vision Task Force will likely discuss the issue at Thursday's meeting. Wayne has an idea for a union model combining font family and spacing.
SC Language
The original SC text is being revised to provide to remove the "mechanism" language and add an exception for UAs that don't provide support. But that text does not have consensus. One person would like PFD not to be exempt (only mobile).
Original Text
For the visual presentation of blocks of text, a mechanism is available to achieve the following:
- character spacing can be selected by the user
- word spacing can be selected by the user
- line spacing can be selected by the user
- paragraph spacing can be selected by the user
Latest Proposed Text
For the visual presentation of blocks of text:
- character spacing can be adjusted by the user
- word spacing can be adjusted by the user
- line spacing can be adjusted by the user
- paragraph spacing can be adjusted by the user
with following the exceptions:
- If the user agent prohibits spacing adjustments the content is exempt.
One person is "not cool" with the exception clause and would like PFD not to be exempt.
Level
The original SC level is AA. Most commenters on GitHub want it at AAA. One person states it is a solid AA for many people.
Support
Supported
- IE (via user stylesheets)
- Safari (via user stylesheets)
- Safari (via reading mode)
- Edge (via reading mode)
- Chrome Stylish addon (Document level only. Details in Spacing Test.)
- Acrobat DC
- VIP PDF Reader
Unsupported
- Mobile
- Acrobat Reader
- Chrome Stylish addon (Author inline
!importantis not overridden by spacing.css. Seems to apply CSS at document level and not as a true user stylesheet. See CSS!importantSpacing Test. - FireFox Stylish addon (Author inline
!importantis not overridden by spacing.css. Seems to apply CSS at document level and not as a true user stylesheet. See CSS!importantSpacing Test.]
Testing
A CSS !important Spacing Test is available.
Comments
A Comments page provides relevant input details.