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Bold text

Turning on bold text improves the contrast of the letters against the background, making the text easier to read. This is vital if you are visually impaired, but it can also be useful if you need reading glasses.

Based on the accessibility research conducted, we estimate that more than half a million Dutch people have turned on this accessibility feature; this is far more than the number of blind and visually impaired people in the country.

The bold text option is available on Android from version 12, but this setting has yet to be included in our measurements.

9.56%

turn on bold text on iOS.

2.54%

turn on bold text on Android.

Support in apps

Below are some code samples for the most commonly used platforms and frameworks.

Android 12 has added the fontWeightAdjustment property. The property returns an integer between 1 and 1000, which indicates the current user preference for increasing font weight. The constant FontStyle.FONT_WEIGHT_BOLD has a value of 700.

fun Context.prefersBoldFont(): Boolean {
    if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT < Build.VERSION_CODES.S) {
        return false
    }
    return resources.configuration.fontWeightAdjustment >= FontStyle.FONT_WEIGHT_BOLD
}

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