[games_access] Font type and sizes in games

[AudioGames.net]

Hi,

*quote*
Just to amuse - I used to work for a college that had Comic Sans as the 
standard font - we had to type every document in Comic Sans, until we got a 
visit from the RNIB... Apparently Comic Sans is one of the worst fonts for 
anyone who isn't dyslexic!
*quote end*

There have been many groups like this one: http://bancomicsans.com/home.html 
that say that Comic Sans is THE worst font ever - but then from an aestethic 
point of view only :)

I have no real experience with a certain font being more accessible than 
normal but I guess that indeed some fonts are easier to read than others. I 
know some accessibility institutions would rather like to ban the "Italic" 
option since this makes an otherwise very readable font less readable (same 
with bold, actually). I do know some fonts have been designed with a minimal 
size and should not be used smaller. For example, Times New Roman was not 
designed to be used smaller than 12 pt.

*quote*
...and to not fix any sizes (so people can scale them up or down easily with 
their browser / accessibility software).
*quote end*
*quote*
Re-scalable fonts will be a tough one I think... But what do you think?
*quote end*

Barrie, you kind of said it already. The whole thing with "scalable 
fonts"-thing is something that comes from a browser-environment. In my 
opinion. In modern webdesign, webdesigners not only focus on "scalable 
fonts" (using em instead of pt), but on scalable websites, meaning that when 
the fonts are scaled, that the website's css takes on a new design that best 
fits the fonts size. This will keep floating DIV's from overlapping, for 
instance.

So if we're thinking about scalable fonts in a game, why not think about 
having a scalable game (to avoid the text covering everything)? I guess 
there are quite a few problems with this though .... ;)

In in case, there are often other options as well. What is the problem we're 
trying to solve with a too-little font size? That the text is too small to 
read for some? Why not add a feature that when the mouse hoovers over the 
text, that the text enlarges itsself automatically a bit (or, without the 
mouse, using a keyboard shortcut?). Why not use sound to make the text 
audible? Etc. etc.

Just some thoughts...

Greets,

Richard






----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Barrie Ellis" <barrie.ellis at oneswitch.org.uk>
To: "IGDA GA mailing list" <games_access at igda.org>
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2006 9:36 AM
Subject: [games_access] Font type and sizes in games


> Wondering if people have any thoughts, links to preferred fonts in games, 
> after this thread:
>
>
> http://www.retroremakes.com/forum2/showthread.php?t=6608&page=2
>
> "
>
> Also we were banned from mixing colours in text, because that made things 
> even worse...
>
> So the moral seems to be make the menu colours and text in games based on 
> the user's Windows defaults or something. Then they will automatically get 
> the right mix of colours and characters... I think... "
>
>
>
> I mentioned that web-wise, the RNIB (Royal National Institute of the 
> Blind) have "verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif" as their order of 
> preference on their web-site, as to how it should display the bulk of 
> text.
>
> Quite a few people spoke of Comic Sans, mentioning that it may be of 
> benefit to dyslexics - but there was some dispute. I personally don't like 
> it, but that's from an aesthetic stand point.
>
> Re-scalable fonts will be a tough one I think... But what do you think?
>
>
> Barrie
> www.OneSwitch.org.uk
>
>
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