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A font feud brews after State Dept. picks Calibri over Times New Roman

`The Times (New Roman) are a-Changin,' read the subject line of a cable from
Secretary of State Antony Blinken to U.S. embassies as part of an
accessibility push

  By [12]John Hudson
  and
  [13]Annabelle Timsit

  January 18, 2023 at 1:23 p.m. EST
  The State Department said fonts with serifs create "issues for
  individuals with disabilities." (Anton Dos Ventos/Alamy Stock Photo)
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  The U.S. State Department is going sans serif: It has directed staff at
  home and overseas to phase out the Times New Roman font and adopt
  Calibri in official communications and memos, in a bid to help
  employees who are visually impaired or have other difficulties reading.
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  updates on Russia's war in Ukraine.

  In a cable sent Tuesday and obtained by The Washington Post, Secretary
  of State Antony Blinken directed the department to use a larger
  sans-serif font in high-level internal documents, and gave the
  department's domestic and overseas offices until Feb. 6 to "adopt
  Calibri as the standard font for all requested papers."

  "The Times (New Roman) are a-Changin," read the subject line.

  Blinken's cable said the shift to Calibri will make it easier for
  people with disabilities who use certain assistive technologies, such
  as [15]screen readers, to read department communication. The change was
  recommended by the secretary's office of diversity and inclusion, but
  the decision has already ruffled feathers among aesthetic-conscious
  employees who have been typing in Times New Roman for years in cables
  and memos from far-flung embassies and consulates around the world.
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  "A colleague of mine called it sacrilege," said a Foreign Service
  officer in Asia, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to
  discuss internal policy changes. "I don't mind the decision because I
  hate serifs, but I don't love Calibri."

  At institutions like the Pentagon, the bureaucratic currency is fighter
  jets, tanks and missiles. But at the State Department, words are the
  coin of the realm, and how they are used matters.

  "I'm anticipating an internal revolt," said a second Foreign Service
  officer.

  Another said the water-cooler talk ranged from strong approval to mild
  grumbling. "It definitely took up, like, half the day," said the
  official.

  The department has used Times New Roman as its standard typeface for
  memos sent to the secretary since 2004.

  In recent years, the decorative "wings" and "feet" of serif fonts have
  gone out of fashion in design circles and consumer brands have opted
  for cleaner sans-serif fonts in their logos such as Helvetica.
  "[16]Millennials Have Killed the Serif," hailed a New York magazine
  headline in 2018.
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  The Washington Post uses the serif-friendly typeface Miller Daily in
  print and Georgia in digital versions.

  The secretary's decision was motivated by accessibility issues and not
  aesthetics, said a senior State Department official familiar with the
  change. It is the latest big copy edit shake-up under Blinken in just a
  few weeks. Earlier this month, the State Department [17]announced it
  would start spelling Turkey as "Türkiye" in diplomatic and formal
  settings at the request of the Turkish embassy.

  [18]Coming soon to a phone near you: A new wave of accessibility tools

  Many experts agree that serif typefaces -- categories of fonts with
  added strokes -- are more difficult to read on computer screens. (The
  difference is lessened when it comes to [19]printed materials.)

  Size is important too: The best practice, according to the University
  of Edinburgh's Disability and Inclusive Learning Service, is to [20]use
  14-point font and avoid writing in block letters or italicizing or
  underlining text. "Good practice would be the use of a sans serif
  font," the service said in an accessibility guide. "Fonts such as Times
  New Roman are much less accessible."
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  But there is no one-size-fits-all accessibility solution, says Jack
  Llewellyn, a London-based designer who specializes in typography, and a
  change in font that could help some readers may actually make reading
  more difficult for others.

  In its cable, the State Department said it was choosing to shift to
  14-point Calibri font because serif fonts like Times New Roman "can
  introduce accessibility issues for individuals with disabilities who
  use Optical Character Recognition technology or screen readers. It can
  also cause visual recognition issues for individuals with learning
  disabilities," it said.

  While Calibri may improve the experience of readers who use screen
  readers or OCR -- technology that can convert the image of text into
  editable text -- it could make reading more difficult for others,
  Llewellyn said.
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  Other design factors, including the alignment of the text, the spacing
  between lines and the contrast in color between the text and the
  background can make a bigger difference in accessibility than font type
  or size, says Ian Hosking, a senior research associate at the
  Engineering Design Center at the University of Cambridge.

  Hosking says those seeking to make text accessible to the largest
  number of people should allow personalization. "Pick a good default
  font, go to one-and-a-half line spacing, consider a baseline off-white
  background with black text, and then guide" readers to increase or
  decrease the contrast or font size based on what feels most comfortable
  to them, he says.

  This approach comes with trade-offs, Hosking points out: Increasing the
  line spacing, for example, makes a document longer. For institutions
  like the State Department that prize succinct and standardized memos,
  that could be a problem.
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  Overall, designing a functional, usable and readable document is a
  "complicated" and "individual" process with no "simple solution," he
  says.

  The debate over fonts and design is long-running. In its memo, the
  State Department cited Microsoft's use of Calibri as a default font as
  a reason for its shift. But in 2021, Microsoft announced it would
  [21]phase out Calibri as a default font in favor of one of five new
  custom sans-serif fonts.

  "Calibri has been the default font for all things Microsoft since 2007,
  when it stepped in to replace Times New Roman across Microsoft Office,"
  the company said in a memo. "It has served us all well, but we believe
  it's time to evolve."

  Still, the fact that the State Department, with its tens of thousands
  of Foreign Service officers, civil servants and local staff, and more
  than [22]270 diplomatic missions around the world, would seek to make
  its documents more accessible is a "good thing," said Llewellyn, who
  argues a broader debate is overdue. "Why wouldn't they be recognizing
  that there's an important issue to address there?"
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