Technique C21:Specifying line spacing in CSS

About this Technique

This technique relates to:

1.4.8: Visual Presentation (Sufficient)
1.4.12: Text Spacing (Advisory)

This technique applies to CSS.

Description

Many people with cognitive disabilities have trouble tracking lines of text when a block of text is single spaced. Providing spacing between 1.5 to 2 allows them to start a new line more easily once they have finished the previous one.

Examples

Example 1: Setting the element to 1.5 line height

In the style sheet set the characteristics of the element.

body { line-height: 1.5; }

This sets the line height of everything in the body of the document to 1.5.

Related Resources

No endorsement implied.

CSS3 Line spacing: the line-height property.
Eric Meyer - Unitless line heights

Tests

Procedure

Open content in a browser.
Check that the spacing between lines in blocks of text is between 1.5 and 2.

Expected Results

Check #2 is true.