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Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

(www.reuters.com)
386 points italophil | 3 comments | 10 Dec 25 00:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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hbogert ◴[10 Dec 25 15:37 UTC] No.46218904[source]▶
The left and right signalling is such a waste of everyone's time and effort. Reactive pettiness
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miltonlost ◴[10 Dec 25 23:04 UTC] No.46225274[source]▶
Is it "signalling" when the left's change was for an accessibility reason, to enable more people to be able to easily read? Signaling means there's no tangible benefit to the change, so the Blinken's switch to a sans-serif font would not be signaling.

Rubio, however, specifically pointed out the symbolic (and malicious) gesture of his whole switch back to Times New Roman.

The left didn't react pettily. Please stop thinking the left are the right are the same when the facts show they are not. The left's change was for a demonstrative benefit. The right is doing it so fuck over people. You think these are the same.

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SpicyLemonZest ◴[10 Dec 25 23:27 UTC] No.46225515[source]▶
I think the concept of an accessible font is signaling. I don't think that Times New Roman is actually less legible than Calibri, and have never seen research claiming to find that Times New Roman in particular or serifs in general pose accessibility problems.
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1. foldr ◴[11 Dec 25 00:13 UTC] No.46225973[source]▶
I easily found some research by searching Google scholar:

https://www.scitepress.org/Papers/2021/109668/109668.pdf

It's not a big difference, but apparently TNR was the worst of the fonts tested for OCR.

But anyway, there was no "signaling" about the change to Calibri. No-one ever tried to make a political issue out of it the way Rubio is now.

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2. SpicyLemonZest ◴[11 Dec 25 01:47 UTC] No.46226674[source]▶
I’m not sure what you think I mean by “signaling”. This is a study of OCR performance, with no attempt to measure practical accessibility issues caused by the font difference which you and I agree is not big. I’m still very skeptical that even a single State Department employee’s ability to do a good job depends on which font the department uses.

If you say that it doesn’t matter whether changing the font had a large practical impact, because it’s a gesture in the right direction or helps build a culture of accessibility, I would classify that as signaling.

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3. foldr ◴[11 Dec 25 08:48 UTC] No.46229063[source]▶
Classify it how you like, but a gesture towards building a culture of accessibility (if indeed that’s what this was) is hardly comparable to an attempt to score points against political opponents.