avoid-inline-spacing

Inline text spacing must be adjustable with custom stylesheets.

Description

The purpose of this rule is to allow individuals to customize text spacing for better readability. It is recommended to avoid using inline styling for text spacing. If it is necessary, the !important flag should not be used to ensure it can be overridden. The following guidelines should be followed:

• Line height (line spacing) should be at least 1.5 times the font size.
• Spacing following paragraphs should be at least 2 times the font size.
• Letter spacing (tracking) should be at least 0.12 times the font size.
• Word spacing should be at least 0.16 times the font size.

Why is it important?

Spacing text at 1.5 to 2 times the regular line height helps individuals with cognitive disabilities track lines of text more effectively, allowing for easier transition to the next line after finishing the previous one.

Examples

• Success:

  • !important is not used in any inlnie CSS style.

• Failure:

  • word-spacing style using !important is applied on a <p> element.

How to fix?

Eliminate any instance of the !important declaration used in inline styling that adjusts text spacing.

Tags

cat.structure, wcag21aa, wcag1412

References

• WCAG 1.4.12: Text Spacing
• Deque University: avoid-inline-spacing
• Accessibility Insights: avoid-inline-spacing
• Evinced Digital Accessibility Knowledge Base: avoid-inline-spacing