Choosing the Most Accessible Font: Why Your Typography Matters More Than You Think
Most designers have had that moment — you find a font you love. It looks clean, modern, maybe even a little quirky. It feels like the brand. You drop it into your design, adjust the colours, tweak the layout…and something isn’t right. The page feels harder to scan. The words don’t “settle”. You can’t quite put your finger on what’s off, but you can sense it.
Often, that uneasy feeling has nothing to do with style and everything to do with accessibility.
Typography isn’t just a design choice. It’s a reading experience. For many people, the font you choose is the difference between effortless reading and exhausting guesswork. And when your content becomes cognitively tiring, visually confusing, or downright unreadable for some users, the message is lost — no matter how beautiful the design is.
The Hidden Work That Fonts Do
When we scan text, our brains rely on letter shapes, spacing, height, weight and tiny visual cues to recognise words quickly. If any of those cues are missing or distorted, the reading process becomes a puzzle. People with low vision, dyslexia, ADHD, or other neurodiversity feel that strain first — but all readers benefit when typography is clear and stable.
And here’s the thing: most “trendy” fonts weren’t designed with real human reading in mind. They were designed to look good on a poster or in a logo. Put them into a paragraph or a body of content, and their charm often disappears.
Where Fonts Go Wrong — and Why It Matters
Think about the last time you saw a font where the capital G looked almost identical to the capital C. Or where the lowercase g and q were so similar you had to stare for a second. Even small distortions — a serif that curls too far, an aperture that closes in on itself, a crossbar that loses its definition — can make letters harder to distinguish.
The same goes for ascenders and descenders that are uneven or exaggerated. Ascenders and descenders are the parts of letters that rise above or fall below the main body of the font, helping shape the rhythm and recognisability of words. Using them inconsistently increases the processing time needed.
The heights of letters that seem to jump around between letters can also be troublesome. The cap-height is the height of uppercase letters, while the x-height is the height of the main body of lowercase letters, and together they influence how large or small text feels on the page. If the balance is off its problematic as it changes how balanced, clear and recognisable the letter shapes appear to the eye
Then there are the numerals that pretend to be letters — the classic 1, l, I problem that makes passwords a nightmare and reading a chore. When numerals imitate letter shapes, it removes the visual cues our brains rely on to recognise characters quickly, forcing readers to slow down and decode rather than simply recognise. Choosing a font where numerals and letters are clearly differentiated helps reduce errors and creates a smoother reading experience for everyone.
Spacing is just as crucial. When “r” and “n” collapse into something that looks like “m”, or “cl” turns into a “d”, or “vv” quietly becomes a “w”, readers end up decoding instead of reading. Every misread shape is friction. And friction is the enemy of comprehension.
We seldom notice good spacing or clear character shapes — but we always notice when they’re wrong.
Why Some Fonts Just Feel Better
The fonts that consistently score well for accessibility all share a few things in common, even if we don’t consciously pick up on them:
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Clear, open letter shapes
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Strong differences between commonly confused characters
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Generous spacing that doesn’t cause collisions
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Balanced weight that still holds up at small sizes
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A cap-height and xheight relationship that feels stable to the eye
These design choices aren’t flashy. They’re not dramatic. Instead, they create calm. They reduce cognitive load and give every reader — including those who process information differently — the chance to engage with your content comfortably.
Good typography fades into the background so the content can shine.
The Designer’s Responsibility
For designers, this is more than a technical decision. It’s an ethical one. Choosing a font that excludes people, even unintentionally, is choosing
who gets to fully read and understand your work. When accessibility is treated as a design constraint rather than a design value, everyone loses.
And the cost of getting it wrong is real: confusion, miscommunication, frustration, and in some cases, complete disengagement.
But the good news is that getting it right isn’t complicated. It just requires awareness, curiosity, and a willingness to test your assumptions. Typography becomes far more meaningful when you think about how real people will interact with it — not just how it appears on your Figma board.
Let’s Make Reading Easier for Everyone
At Access Advisors, we work with designers, developers and organisations who want their content to be not just beautiful, but truly usable. If you’re choosing a font, rethinking your brand typography, or simply wanting a sanity check from accessibility specialists, we’re here to help.
Reach out to us — let’s create digital experiences that feel good to read for everyone.
Read our previous blogs in this series