Favorite fonts?

[kestrell]

I realize that I am opening a serious can of geeky worms by asking this, and I even encourage that, so...

Do folks have favorite fonts?

I'm trying to decide on a font for my webpages. I want something sans serif and accessible/easy to read, but also something that evokes books. My favorite font is actually futura, which is what my business cards are in, because it is both supposedly the most easy to view font--it's a geometric sanse serif-- and associated with space travel and science fiction, due to being the easiest to see at the farthest distance. For some reason, however, it is suggested that futura should only be used for headings and signage.

Comments

[kestrell]

Hey Dusk: when you say you use it every day, is that a browser setting? I'm also trying to get a sense of how often people with visual or print impairments set their browser defaults for accessible fonts. And thanks for the extra info on font geekery *smile*.

[duskpeterson]

I use Firefox on my laptop. I have it set to override the website's choice of font with my own default font. Usually I choose Arial Rounded MT Bold as my default font, except when it's important for me to distinguish between boldface and non-boldface - for example, when I'm using HTML code in one of my own posts.

For mobile Safari, all I can do when I'm having trouble reading a page is switch to the Reader view in Safari, which provides me with a slightly larger, boldface font. When my eyes get really bad, I abandon Safari and switch over to the Perfect Browser app, which allows me to specify font style and size.

Unfortunately, none of this is obvious stuff. It took me a while to figure out there was a Firefox setting that would let me routinely override the website's fonts. And I had to spend hours and hours on the Apple app store, searching for an iOS mobile browser that would let me read in my choice of font. So I think it's fair to assume that some of your website's visitors are simply going to accept whatever font you choose for them, because they don't have the knowledge or the software to choose for themselves.

But if they do know how to override your font choice, that should be easy enough for them to do, at least in the browsers I've used. I don't think you need to do anything special on your end.

Though maybe jesse_the_k has more to say on this topic!

[kestrell]

I'm working on a document I will be posting to my new web page which collects all the resources I've accumulated during 2020.
One of the topics I want to include is links to information about browser accessibility, including links to how to tweak settings for the major browser, and perhaps a few of the most useful extensions.
Please send me any resources you think would be useful.

[duskpeterson]

Okay, I just checked Chrome, and there is no way to override the website's font choice, except with an extension. You can specify a default font, though. This may be where jesse_the_k's suggestion would work, of having the website defer to the default font, but I don't know how to code that.

Of course, this would mean that, in Safari, the user would simply see Safari's choice of default font, with the user having no choice.

Incidentally, Safari and Chrome are by far the most popular browsers currently (at least, for sighted users; I don't know about visually impaired users).

[jesse_the_k]

iOS 14, which is too buggy for me to download just yet, does let you set your default browser to something that's not Safari.

https://tidbits.com/2020/09/25/how-to-change-your-default-email-and-web-clients-in-ios-14-and-ipados-14/