We're used to using bold, italic, and underline to provide emphasis. As with other good things, sometimes we over use them.
Did you know?
Screen readers don't indicate bold, italic, or underlined text. If you need to make sure something is emphasized to all readers, make sure to include text clues as well.
For example:
- Note: This information is important (The word "Note" is bold to catch attention visually but not read by screen readers)
- Important: This information is important. (By changing to the word "important" someone using a screen reader gets that added emphasis, we can still keep it bold for visual styling.
Too much of a good thing:
- Bold text can limit reading speed by up to 50%. Try to limit to less than 30 characters per section.
- Italic text can limit reading speed by up to 70% Try to limit to less than 30 characters per section.
Did you know? Underlined text
- Because hyperlinks are underlined (or should be), underlining text for emphasis in electronic documents is discouraged, unless required for a specific document type.
- Use bold or italic instead.