Level AA · WCAG 2.1
1.4.12 Text Spacing
Users can override line height, paragraph spacing, letter spacing and word spacing without content being cut off or overlapping.
Partly automated Some failures are detectable, others need judgement.
How it fails in practice
A card with a fixed height where increased line spacing pushes the last line behind the card’s footer.
How to fix it
Use min-height instead of height anywhere text lives, and stop setting line-height in pixels.
At a glance
- Level
- Level AA — the level EN 301 549 requires, and therefore the level the BFSG and the EAA are measured against.
- Principle
- Perceivable
- Guideline
- 1.4 Distinguishable
- Added in
- WCAG 2.1
- EN 301 549
- 9.1.4.12
- Automated check
- Partly automated
Partly automated
How far an automated check gets
A tool finds some failures here and cannot see the rest. A clean automated result means the checks that exist found nothing — not that the criterion is met. This is the gap that makes a green scan look like an accessible site, and it is where the keyboard agent, the agents still in development and a human reviewer do the remaining work.
Rules that check this criterion
avoid-inline-spacingInline text spacing must be adjustable with custom stylesheets
The rule ids are axe-core’s (version 4.14.0), the open-source engine our scan runs, and our keyboard agent’s — the names a report or a CI log will show. An underlined id has a page of its own here.
Where it matters most
The guides that list it among the criteria to check first.
Related criteria
Other criteria under the same guideline.
Further reading
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Text spacing
No content may be lost when users increase line, paragraph, letter and word spacing (WCAG 1.4.12, Level AA).
Find out which criteria your site fails
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