THE GITHTML FIELD GUIDE
Make HTML layouts tolerate a reader's text-spacing preferences
Allow text containers to grow and avoid positioning that assumes one exact line height or paragraph length. Review the document with increased text spacing, especially navigation, callouts, captions, and table cells. Preserve all content and functionality rather than forcing the original visual arrangement to remain unchanged.
Find the fragile components
Ordinary paragraphs in normal document flow often adapt well when spacing changes. Problems tend to appear in carefully fitted cards, fixed-height warnings, labels positioned over images, and navigation bars with no room to wrap. Begin your review there instead of assuming the main prose represents every component.
A warning that clips its final line is more serious than a card becoming taller. Treat expansion as an expected behavior, not a cosmetic defect. If several items must remain aligned, consider whether the alignment is actually necessary for understanding. A reading document can usually tolerate uneven heights more easily than missing words.
Remove hard assumptions
Avoid setting text containers to exact heights merely to create a uniform grid. Use padding and natural content flow where possible. Relative sizing and flexible spacing can help, but they do not automatically prevent clipping when an ancestor hides overflow. Inspect the entire chain of containers around an affected element.
Do not override a reader's preferences with increasingly forceful rules simply to restore the original appearance. The document's purpose is to communicate its content. If an exported template is too rigid, simplify it at the source. A restrained article layout can be more robust than a collection of finely tuned presentation cards.
Apply a reproducible review
The WCAG text-spacing guidance specifies particular adjustments for evaluation. Use that source when conducting a formal check, and record the settings and environment you used. For an early authoring pass, deliberately increasing line and paragraph spacing can expose fragile areas quickly, but do not present that informal experiment as complete conformance testing.
- Inspect long headings and navigation labels after spacing increases.
- Check every callout's bottom edge for clipped content.
- Look for overlapping captions, badges, and table text.
- Remove unnecessary fixed heights and absolute positioning.
- Confirm links and disclosure controls remain reachable.
- Retest the exported artifact after changes, since the generator may reintroduce the original constraints.
- Record any unresolved issue with its section name and the affected reading setting.
Sources and further reading
AI-assisted writing with source-linked guidance and illustrative examples. Read our editorial approach or report a correction.