Evidence for choosing and approving fonts

Test a font file against published requirements for legibility, character support, technical quality, layout stability, and production readiness.

Typography Standard® produces a scored, file-specific report showing what passed, what needs review, and the evidence behind every result. Assessment is free; publish and archive a shareable report for $29 when you need a permanent record.

Make font decisions with evidence

A font can look right and still create problems in production. Typography Standard® measures the characteristics that can be tested consistently, helping design teams, type foundries, developers, clients, and procurement teams make more informed decisions.

The report answers five practical questions:

1. Does the file contain the characters required for professional use?
2. Can commonly confused characters be distinguished?
3. How reliably are characters recognized at defined small sizes?
4. Are the file structure, metadata, and packaging production-ready?
5. What should be corrected or reviewed before deployment?

What Typography Standard measures

Character support

Checks Latin characters, numerals, punctuation, currency symbols, and related coverage.

Legibility signals

Measures small-size recognition and commonly confused character combinations, including I, l, 1, O, 0, rn, and m.

Technical quality

Inspects file integrity, glyph inventory, naming, weight metadata, OpenType information, and relevant font metrics.

Layout stability

Reviews x-height and vertical-metric signals that can affect consistent text rendering.

Production readiness

Checks web packaging, payload efficiency, family information, and declared licensing metadata.

How it works

1. Upload — Submit an OTF, TTF, WOFF, WOFF2, or supported family archive.
2. Test — The file is evaluated against the published Typography Standard 2.0 methodology.
3. Review — See the overall result, individual requirements, measured values, thresholds, evidence, and remediation priorities.
4. Publish — Create an archived, shareable report for client review, procurement, or internal documentation.

Free assessment

Upload a single font file to run automated TS 2.0 checks at no cost. Supported formats: .otf, .ttf, .woff, .woff2, or .zip · max 10MB. Purchase later if you need a published, archived report.

Certification

Certification is based on mandatory requirements, overall score, and unresolved warnings.

• TS Certified — All mandatory requirements pass, the certification threshold is met (score ≥ 90), and no warnings remain.
• Meets TS 2.0 with warnings — All mandatory requirements pass and score ≥ 90, but non-blocking findings require review.
• Does not meet TS 2.0 — One or more mandatory requirements fail, or the required score is not reached.
• Unable to evaluate — The file is invalid, unsupported, or incomplete.

See Certification rules for the full definition.

Designed for real approval workflows

Typography Standard® reports can support:

• Typeface and font-file QA
• Design-system documentation
• Foundry release checks
• Client font recommendations
• Procurement review
• Brand-guideline development
• Technical handoff
• Version comparison

Scope

Typography Standard® evaluates the submitted font file against TS 2.0. It does not evaluate the complete accessibility of a website, application, document, or campaign. WCAG conformance also depends on implementation choices such as text size, contrast, spacing, zoom, layout, and semantic structure.

Pricing

Testing is free. Publish and archive a shareable report for $29 per font file.