Better differentiate lowercase l and uppercase i about public-sans HOT 5 OPEN

IMO this is a good request. Whilst the two letters are unambiguous within this font, when readers encounter a piece of text where they are not sure what font is being used, they will not be able to tell whether a vertical line is an "I" or an "L".

Said another way: Most readers who read text displayed in Public Sans are not going to know the fine details of the font, so it's worth choosing a glyph which is unambiguous across all fonts.

from public-sans.

Curious request -- the lowercase l is tailed which makes it quite distinct from the I (compared to many other typefaces) -- I am very happy to see this trend in sans-serif fonts!

from public-sans.

from public-sans.

@nmsmith that's a good point I hadn't considered. e.g. if you read something with just a capital I in it, no other context (coupon code or etc), and unfamiliar with the font, you could mistake it for lowercase l.

from public-sans.

Distinct \I and \l glyphs (and \1) are required by the German legibility standard DIN 1450. Presumably the US government strives to improve the accessibility of its websites to users with limited vision, and so a serifed I should be the default (like IBM Plex Sans).

Two examples of isolated sans-serif characters.

• Serif texts often report url addresses with sans-serif fonts.
• Statistical graphics often label objects with sans-serif fonts.

I would request that the italicized \a (a) have a 2nd story. The single-story a is deprecated, because it can be confused with the Greek letter alpha, which is often used in mathematics and statistics (e.g., by statisticians at federal agencies).

from public-sans.