Sarah Paterson ENG – PWR ‘15

Decorative Fonts. Decorative fonts have an appearance with embellishments or ornaments. Decorative typography is a large category that includes many style variations. To install the unzipped file from the Desktop or another folder (that is not the C: Windows Fonts folder), just double-click the file and the Install Fonts screen appears. Click t he Install. Cool Decorative Fonts: Font Styles for Mac or Windows Free. Preview and download 1001 different font styles Download Mac - Download PC for Microsoft Office, Photoshop, and Design Software.

Welcome to Visual Rhetoric week on the CUPID blog! I’m going to kick it off by talking about typography, one of my favorite subjects. For a casual document designer, font is typically something chosen by instinct. Certain typefaces seem to say certain things, and while one might suit your situation perfectly, another may be entirely inappropriate. For instance, you’d never see a wedding invitation written in Comic Sans, unless the wedding was between two cartoon characters and held in a clown car.

But while we might know these things about type instinctually, there are more technical reasons for why we choose what we do! Here’s some important terminology that will get you talking like a typesetter:

Font vs. Typeface: Time for some nitpicky history! Most people refer to a kind or style of type as a “font.” This isn’t technically correct – a style of type, like Garamond or Helvetica, is actually called a “typeface.” Something like “Garamond bold size 14” would be considered a font. This goes back to the original days of print, when each individual letter required a different block, or “face,” to be set on a printing press. Together, all similar letters of one “typeface” would be a font. However, since the rise of desktop publishing, the two terms are often used interchangeably.

Serif: A serif (probably from the Dutch word schreef, meaning “dash”) is the little foot or dash that finishes off some letters. Typefaces that include serifs (like Times New Roman) are typically used for body text, since it is widely believed that serif fonts are easier to read in large quantities. Serif fonts are also often considered more serious or academic. Web-text often uses sans-serif typefaces, or typefaces without the dashes on the end (like Arial or Verdana). Some typefaces are also referred to as “slab serif,” which means the dash on the end is thick and heavy (think Rockwell or Playbill).

Decorative: This includes any number of illustrated or special fonts. These are often used for movie titles and brands, because they are made special to serve a specific purpose. Basic decorative fonts in Microsoft Word include Jokerman, Broadway, and Curlz. Some decorative fonts can get ridiculous – here’s a page full of Halloween holiday fonts, one of which is just a different jack-o-lantern smile for each character (though that would be called a “Symbol” typeface).

Script: Script fonts differ from decorative fonts in that people can hand-write (not draw) them. Handwriting, cursive, and calligraphy typefaces fall under this category. Fonts like these are appropriate for invitations, graphic design work, or even for personal branding. Make a typeface of your own handwriting here (and if you’re feeling fancy, you could even make a decorative one)!

Swashes and Ligatures: Opentype fonts (saved as .otf) often have additional characters called “swashes” and “ligatures” that can be used to replace serifs and connect letters. A swash is exactly what it sounds like – a decorative swoosh to replace a serif. A ligature takes the place of a serif and joins two letters together that wouldn’t ordinarily be joined. Most desktop publishing software gives you the option to use these characters – if you’re interested in trying out ligatures in Microsoft Word, go to Format -> Font -> Advanced, and it gives you the option to include any of a font’s available ligatures.

A very swash-y design example

Kerning vs. Tracking: Kerning is the space between individual letter pairs, and is typically used to eliminate space between large overhanging capitals and the smaller letters beside them. Tracking does what kerning does, just uniformly over any number of letters.

Leading: This is the spacing between lines of type. If you want to squash your lines together or space them way out, a leading change is the way to do it. This can be easily done in Photoshop or InDesign (there’s a button especially for altering leading), but it can be done in Word too! If you go to format a paragraph (same place you go to change your research paper for class from single to double-spaced), the line spacing option allows you to enter your own line spacing value. Values above 1 stretch the leading out, and values below one (think decimal points) shrink it.

Here are some useful websites so you can try out some new typefaces for yourself:

Free fonts:

Font ideas:

Happy typing!

Update November 2020: We’re very pleased to report that the latest releases of Office 365 have substantially improved the Decorative checkbox, and that it now works effectively both with screen readers working with Office files, as well as PDF files exported from Word. There are still imperfections; however, we have test results from all major screen reader combinations demonstrating that, for the most part, one can now trust the Decorative checkbox to behave as expected. Therefore, although our recipe contains many nuances that are invaluable to users of earlier versions of Office, the best advice we now can offer is to upgrade to the latest version. Thank you, Microsoft, for listening carefully, and continuing to work with us and others in the community to strive to include everyone.

We’re constantly striving to create accessibility techniques that are so easy to do that everyone who creates documents can make them a habit. Today’s tip is aboutdecorative images in Microsoft Office: whether Word or PowerPoint.

If you’re familiar with creating accessible documents and webpages, then you already know the importance of using alt attributes for images in HTML, including making the attribute blank (<alt=””>) for those images that aredecorative, redundant, or irrelevant. Similarly, in PDF files, we mark such images as an “artifact”.

However, one of the big challenges in creating accessible PDF files from Microsoft Office is the unfortunate lack of a way within Word and PowerPoint to indicate that an image is irrelevant. Hopefully, Microsoft will soon realize how important this is, and give us an Artifact checkbox in the Alt Text tab. (Yes, Microsoft has added a Decorative checkbox in Office 365 and Office 2019, but it still, sadly doesn’t do what we need it to do!)

(Microsoft certainly has been making strides to make it easier to provide alternative text. The Insider Release of Word 365 now includes an Edit Alt Text command that optionally gets you directly to the Alt Text field. And their artificial intelligence engine that now proposes alternative text based on image analysis is quite remarkable: however, this also underscores the need to effectively labeldecorativeimages when the AI engine is proposing the inclusion of a description for an image that is actuallydecorative.)

In addition, you may wish to publish an accessible .docx or .pptx file as is (rather than exporting it to another format such as PDF or HTML)… or have people living with disabilities help author those files. And so we need consensus on how to indicatedecorativeobjects within these situations as well.

Decorative Fonts In Microsoft Word Document

To draw a parallel, Adobe InDesign users have the ability to add an Artifact tag to images within InDesign (using the Object Export Options feature) so that when they export to PDF, the resulting file has the image artifacted. However, Office doesn’t have such a feature … and so you have no choice but to manually fix each such image in the resulting PDF file (for example, using Acrobat Pro’sDecorativecheckbox in its Set Alternate Text feature). Even worse, if you make changes to the Word or PowerPoint file and generate a fresh PDF file, you have to repeat that manual work over again each time. Until now.

Decorative Fonts In Microsoft Word Format

We researched and we consulted with many other accessibility experts. We also looked carefully at what Microsoft suggests. But we were still unsatisfied. So we ran tests with various versions and platforms of Office and Acrobat Pro, as well as with various assistive technologies and testing with people living with disabilities.

The result is that we’ve come up with what we think is the best practice for getting accessible PDF files from Word and PowerPoint in a way that yields the best output, and is also the most sustainable and realistic workflow (including playing well with the Office Accessibility Checker built into Microsoft Office). Our technique works whether you are generating PDF or whether you’ll be sharing documents as accessible pptx or docx.

A very common solution to this issue, that I feel strongly should be discarded, is to put a wordspace (or a non‑breaking space or an en dash or an em dash…) into the Description field ofdecorativeimages in your .docx and .pptx files. However, not only will the Office Accessibility Checker mark these as errors (making it impractical to track which images you have set correct alternative text for and which you have not) … but also (although Acrobat Pro’s Accessibility Checker will not complain) your resulting PDF will now have figures with Alt text dysfunctionally containing a single wordspace. Those figures in your PDF file will sadly announce with phrases such as “Graphic 16” in the JAWS screen reader. Such figures will also understandably fail the PDF/UA standard, with the PAC 2.0 checker reporting an error of “Missing Alternative Text”.

So, instead, here’s our better recipe:

1. In Word or PowerPoint, go to the Description field in Format Picture or Format Graphic (or the Alternative Text field in Word 2003 or 2007) which would normally hold your alternative text, and put just the word “Decorative” (“Décoratif” or “Esthétique“ in French).(Tip: You can highlight multipleobjectsand apply the same Description to them all at once.)
2. If you have any groups ofobjects, set the Alt Text for all Group elements to “Decorative”, whether the elements within the Group aredecorativeor not. Conveniently, such Groupobjectswill be automatically coded accessibly in the resulting PDF. (Tip: If you are in a PowerPoint file, adddecorativeobjectson Master slides where possible. Once exported to PDF, such images will already conveniently be artifacts, i.e. “background”).
3. When you run the Office Accessibility Checker, you’ll find that, conveniently, theobjectsyou’ve marked as “Decorative” will no longer appear as Errors, allowing you to easily find those objectsthat still need attention. (The Office Accessibility Checker gives an error for “Missing Alt Text” onobjectswhose Description field is empty or contains only blanks or a URL).
4. If exporting to PDF, export the file using our standard best practice recipe for exporting Word or PowerPoint to PDF:
   1. Acrobat ribbon> Preferences> Settings tab: check the Enable Accessibility And Reflow With Tagged PDF checkbox.
   2. Acrobat ribbon> Preferences> Settings tab: check the Enable Advanced Tagging checkbox. (In Word 2010, this setting is instead on the Word tab.)
   3. Advanced Settings button> Fonts section> check the Subset Embedded Fonts When Percent… checkbox, then set its value to 1% … then remove all fonts from the Never Embed list.
   4. Acrobat ribbon> Create PDF. (If the file includes Type 1 fonts, you may have to Save As PDF instead.)
   5. Acrobat Pro> Tools> Action Wizard> Make Accessible Wizard> run “Set Open Options” and run “Set Tab Order Property”.
5. In Acrobat Pro (or the PDF editing tool of your choice), artifact every “Decorative” object using the Touch Up Reading Order tool, finding then selecting each as a “Background”. (Warning: You’ll be tempted to use the Acrobat Pro Set Alternative Text’s “Decorative” checkbox feature to change the “Decorative”objectsfrom your Office file into artifacts. However, sadly, that feature will not do a proper job of artifacting theseobjects. Instead use the Touch Up Reading Order tool to locate each one that shows as “Decorative, and then select the Background button to artifact … or use other advanced techniques or tools.)
6. If exporting to HTML instead of PDF, then, in the resulting HTML, search and replace Alt=“Decorative” to Alt=“”.

So there you are. Do you agree or would like to give me some pushback? And would anyone like to propose what the standard term for “Decorative” should be in languages other than English or French?

Thank you to all the experts and testers who helped us sort this out!

(Also, if you don’t already have our Accessibility Ribbon for Word, you may wish to try it out!)

Accessibly yours,
David Berman, CPWA, CPACC, WAC

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Reviewed November 1, 2020