Use Bold and Italics Judiciously, but Avoid Color and Underlining
Many authors like to use different colors in headings and subheadings, or in titles of tables and textboxes, to convey meaning. For example, an author might want to have safety warnings in a lab manual and use a heading like Danger! However, the use of color to indicate or enhance meaning poses several accessibility issues, including the following:
- Some colorblind readers may not be able to distinguish use of color.
- Accessibility guidelines require a certain level of color contrast between the typed text and the background.
- A screen reader will not distinguish different colors of text.
For these reasons, color cannot be used as the only method to convey meaning or emphasis. It must be paired with another method, such as the use of bold or repeated wording.
In addition, screen readers do not recognize underlining, so it should not be used at all for emphasis. Underlining should only be used as a visual cue to indicate hyperlinks to sighted readers.
Italics also pose accessibility challenges. For a reader with dyslexia, italics can make it more difficult to distinguish between certain letters (consider g, p, and q vs. g, p, and q). Many screen readers will not announce italics when they appear in the content.
- Italics can be used very sparingly for single words or short phrases, or when required according to the work’s citation style.
- Italics should not be used for full paragraphs or blocks of text.
To convey emphasis, please use bold.
For accessibility, the recommended best practice is to convey emphasis in the wording as shown in the examples below.
- Extremely dangerous
- Very warm
- Quite popular
Accessibility Topics
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