Design for Readability

Readability and legibility are essential for all users and mandatory under WCAG 2.1 Level AA (required for UAMS compliance by April 26, 2027 – DOJ Title II ADA final rule).

Poor readability can prevent users with visual, cognitive, or motor disabilities from accessing content. Blackboard Ally for Websites flags many of these issues automatically — always fix Ally warnings before publishing.

Readability and Legibility

For people with visual impairments and disabilities, these attributes can be essential to a successful user experience. For example:

• Some people have difficulty tracking along a line of text if line-height (leading) is too wide or too narrow.
• Some people need to enlarge text and cannot access content set in small or fixed sizes.

For optimal readability (WCAG 2.1 Level AA)

• Use visual and semantic space to group related content (WCAG 1.3.1).
• Provide appropriate line height (at least 1.5 – automatically applied in the UAMS CMS).
• Use clean typography — do not override the UAMS CMS fonts.
• Avoid ALL CAPS (reduces shape recognition).
• Never underline non-link text (reserved for hyperlinks).
• Use left-aligned text for body copy (consistent left margin is easiest to read).
• Do not put two spaces after a period.
• Ensure text resizes up to 200% without loss of content or function (WCAG 1.4.4).
• Maintain sufficient color contrast (WCAG 1.4.3) and allow user-defined text spacing without breaking layout (WCAG 1.4.12).

Source: Harvard Digital Accessibility, WebAIM, and WCAG 2.1 Success Criteria.

Text Alignment

Left-aligned text is almost always the easiest to read (except for languages that read right-to-left or vertically).

• Avoid long blocks of centered text — each line starts in a different place.
• Never use fully-justified text for body paragraphs — it creates uneven spacing and “rivers of white” that harm readability (especially for cognitive disabilities). See W3C Technique G169: Aligning text on only one side.

Centered headings or short pull-quotes are acceptable exceptions.

How Blackboard Ally Helps

Ally automatically flags:

• Low contrast
• Fixed text sizes
• Poor line/paragraph spacing
• Justified text
• ALL CAPS overuse

Fix these in the page editor — most are resolved by using standard UAMS CMS blocks and not overriding styles.