Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Eli | Email Lauren It’s a familiar Washington story: government agencies that just can’t seem to get on the same page. In this instance, quite literally. Earlier this week, a memo from Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN directed all department personnel in the agency’s Foggy Bottom headquarters and posts around the world to use Calibri, a large sans-serif font, for all official documents. His deadline: Feb. 6. “The Times (New Roman) are a-Changing,” the cable was titled. The change, a spokesperson for the State Department said, was recommended by the secretary’s office of diversity and inclusion as a way to make the print easier to read for people who use screen readers or other assistive technologies. It grew out of the agency’s iCount campaign last year, an effort to create a more inclusive workplace for employees with disabilities. “As we laid out in the cable — Times New Roman have ‘wings’ and ‘feet’ — more commonly known as serifs,” the spokesperson said. “These angular features on the text can introduce accessibility issues for individuals with disabilities – including those who may use optical character recognition or screen readers. Calibri has no wings and feet and is the default font in many software products.” Funny enough, Microsoft established Calibri as its default font back in 2007. But the company said in 2021 that it would be phasing it out in favor of a new, to be determined custom sans serif font. The new directive, first reported by the Washington Post’s State Department correspondent JOHN HUDSON, clarifies a couple things. First of all, some people are really obsessed with fonts (like the anonymous foreign service officers who complained to Hudson about the aesthetics of Calibri). Secondly, there appears to be no consistency across the executive branch or any formal administration guidance on the matter. The White House — inexplicably, we believe — uses Courier New for presidential actions: memoranda proclamations, directives, executive orders. For letters, they go with Times New Roman. At the Environmental Protection Agency, all official letters and memos must be typed in 12-point Times New Roman, according to its correspondence manual. But the agency plans to update the manual this year, and has had preliminary discussions about reviewing its font, a spokesperson said. That appears more than a little overdue. The current directive dates from February 1997 and included a note for users of WordPerfect 5.0/5.1 that 10-pitch Courier was also acceptable, although that option was struck in 2007. At the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Graphics Standards Guide specifies that Myriad Pro is the default font for all text, with Calibri as the back-up. All titles, the guide states, should be in Georgia: “This elegant serif font provides contrast to the general sans serif body text, and conveys a modern yet traditional look and feel.” The exhaustive Style Guide for the Department of Agriculture includes a clear directive for staff: “Use only Times New Roman 12-point typeface.” No executive agency, sadly, has chosen to go truly bold and conduct all official business in comic sans. While disability rights advocates applauded the State Department's effort, they bristled at the comments unnamed department officials made to Hudson lamenting that Calibri is such a humdrum, hardly iconic font (not that anyone expects government communiques to be written in Helvetica, the typeface of the New York City subway, or Gotham, a font deployed to great effect in President BARACK OBAMA’s campaign signage). “Aesthetics are frequently weaponized against accessibility,” said MARIA TOWN, president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities. “We have seen entities resist constructing ramps or adding railings to buildings because of concerns that it would disrupt the aesthetics of an entrance. These same dynamics play out in the presentation and delivery of information.” Town said she hopes the State Department effort to make their documents more accessible "is accompanied by other work to increase information accessibility, such as compliance with section 508 for all State Department websites and documents and more frequent use of plain language.” Such changes are no small matter, said JOEY HUNZIKER, the director of leadership and organizing at the National Center for Learning Disabilities. “It might not be aesthetically pleasing to some, but if it's making life easier for disabled workers then we should be moving in that direction.” MESSAGE US —Are you a font obsessive? Do you have thoughts on which one would be best for the Biden administration? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com.
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