Are italics on the web bad for accessibility?

Question

On a current web project, we've received word from the client that we can no longer have any italicized text on the website we are building.

When I asked for some reasoning, I was told that "our accessibility person says it's bad for accessibility", with no other justification.

Honestly, I've never heard of this before, so I tried to do a bit of research on it.

All I've been able to find is this post from 2007 which literally comes to the conclusion of:

I never found the text of any study that proves it. There's reference to one, and that's good enough for me. Instead, I am relying on the "everyone says it" method

With most of the post's references having long since rotted away.

As far as I can tell, the main reason italics were ever an accessibility issue were low dpi screens making small oblique fonts unreadable.

But in this retina world, I find it hard to believe that's still a valid reason.

So, what are the reasons for italics being bad for accessibility, and are those reasons backed by any real studies?

Answer 1

Italics are a known problem for some people with dyslexia and the general advice has been to avoid italics (particularly large blocks of italic text) and instead use bold for emphasis.

The British Dyslexia Association says:

Avoid underlining and italics: these tend to make the text appear to run together. Use bold instead.

UX Movement touches on this in an article about Bad Practices That Hurt Dyslexic Users:

Italics are sometimes used to highlight text. But you shouldn’t use italicized text because they make letters hard to read. The letters have a jagged line compared to non-italic fonts. The letters also lean over making it hard for dyslexic users to make out the words. When the text size is small, the text is even more illegible. A better way to highlight is to use bold text because the letters are clearer and give better contrast.

There was an experimental study in 2013 looking at which fonts were easiest for dyslexic individuals to read:

Based on the evaluation of 48 dyslexic subjects ages 11-50, reading 12 texts with 12 different fonts, they determined that reading performance was best with sans serif, monospaced, and roman fonts used in the study. They also found that reading was significantly impaired when italic fonts were used.

In WCAG, for Guideline 3.1 Readable (Make text content readable and understandable) there is an advisory technique for "Avoiding chunks of italic text".

Answer 2

The study list linked to in the blog mentioned by Matt Obee is here http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/sites/default/files/good_fonts_for_dyslexia_study.pdf

It's an interesting paper and the conclusions are worth working through:

The main conclusion is that font types have an impact on readability of people with dyslexia.

As they do on readability with people without dyslexia. No great surprise here.

Good fonts for people with dyslexia are Helvetic, Courier, Arial, Verdana and CMU, taking into consideration both reading performance and subjective preference. Also, sans serif, monospaced and roman [serif] font types increase significantly the reading performance ...

Ok... so sans, mono and serif choices can work well for people with dyslexia, much they same as they can work well for people without dyslexia...

... while italic fonts decreased reading performance. In particular, Arial It should be avoided since it significantly decreased readability.

By a "decrease in reading performance" they seem to mean it took longer to read. This is to be expected with italics read by people without dyslexia. I couldn't find anything in their paper to suggest that comprehension fell when using italics. I have seen it suggested that comprehension can increase when readability goes down due to it taking more effort to read so the text is read in more detail.

It should be noted that Arial Italic is considered one of the worst designed typefaces ever to grace computers. (In fact it's not really an italic but a slanted roman sans). That crappy typefaces are hard to read is not any great surprise.

So to conclude:

1. Italics are likely to slow reading down.
2. There's nothing in the paper to suggest that italics are bad for accessibility.
3. Typography for dyslexic readers should consider the same factors as typography for non-dyslexic readers.

This supports the dead-horse I've been beating for a long time: just do good typographic design and all your readers will benefit - there is no need to have any special considerations for dyslexic readers above and beyond your non-dyslexic readers.

Answer 3

I agree with the comment above about creating a good typographic design and all your readers will benefit.

My problem with removing italics is that in doing so you are also ignoring the standards set out for proper document creation. Italics are to be used when referencing titles of works, foreign words/technical terms/unfamiliar words (though you can also use bold for these), names of trains, ships, aircraft, and spacecraft, and legislation. These are usually not large chunks of text. I do agree that italics should never be used simply to draw attention to a paragraph or portion of text. That also goes against good documentation standards.

Answer 4

Sounds more like a question about communication than accessibility and italics along the lines of "What is the best way to respond to prescriptive feedback on designs" when what you'd prefer is feedback with more background about the suggested change. I think it's a pretty common quandary for designers in organizations where there is a product owner setting constraints.

It seems like in this instance the answer was, "go research the reason for the constraint yourself and then decide to agree"

Curious how this played out in real life?