C19Sufficient technique WCAG 1.4.8 Level AAA Not graded

Align text left or right, never justified

Justified text stretches the spaces between words so both edges line up, and the uneven gaps that result run together into pale rivers down the column. W3C attaches C19 to one criterion, 1.4.8 Visual Presentation, which is Level AAA, and lists it as sufficient there. The technique itself is one declaration. Set text-align to left in a left-to-right language and to right in a right-to-left one, and leave justify alone. It is not a Level AA obligation and we still flag it in every audit, because the cost is nothing and the people it affects are the people already working hardest to read the page. Ragged-right text also holds its shape better when a reader applies their own word and letter spacing, which justified text fights by design.

How we find it in an audit

Justified text is a one-line search across the stylesheets, and the harder half is the CMS, where an editor toolbar can apply justification inline on any paragraph an author decides to tidy up. So we look at the rendered pages as well as the source, and we check what the editor lets people do.

How affected users experience it

This is a low-vision and dyslexia issue rather than a screen reader one. Rivers of white space pull the eye down the column instead of along the line, and readers who track text word by word lose their place at every gap. Somebody using a screen magnifier sees a few words at a time, so an unpredictable gap between them is the whole of their view.

Passes vs. fails

Passes: the box grows with spacing. Fails: fixed height eats the text.

Passes

p { text-align: left; }

Fails

p { text-align: justify; }

Other ways to satisfy this rule

21 guides on this site are filed under 1.4.8 Visual Presentation. W3C lists this one as sufficient for that rule on its own. Implement it correctly, in a way your readers' software actually supports, and the rule is met.

This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique C19: Specifying alignment either to the left or right in CSS. W3C publishes its techniques as guidance rather than as the standard, and says so on every one of them. The success criterion is what conformance is measured against, and a technique is one documented way to meet it.