A11ying with Sanna - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines a guide to the accessibility requirements
1 Perceivable

1.4.8 Visual Presentation

Conformance level: AAA
Criterion released in WCAG version: 2.0

Official description of the success criterion

For the visual presentation of blocks of text, a mechanism is available to achieve the following:

  • Foreground and background colors can be selected by the user.
  • Width is no more than 80 characters or glyphs (40 if CJK).
  • Text is not justified (aligned to both the left and the right margins).
  • Line spacing (leading) is at least space-and-a-half within paragraphs, and paragraph spacing is at least 1.5 times larger than the line spacing.
  • Text can be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent in a way that does not require the user to scroll horizontally to read a line of text on a full-screen window.

What to do?

Offer users the ability to control foreground and background colors, line spacing, and width of blocks of text.

Why is it important?

Supports readability and customization for users with visual or cognitive disabilities.

More about this criterion elsewhere