Does Text spacing gets applied to the "Service Mark" superscript text?

[AmruthRaj-David]

Hi All,

This is regarding the "1.4.12 Text Spacing". I have observed that "Text spacing is not getting applied to the "Service Mark" superscript text". Letter spacing is not observed between the "S" and "M".

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Navigate to the URL: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/service-mark.asp
2. Apply text spacing to the text.
3. Observe the "Superscript text(SM)" text under key takeaways third point.

Actual Result: Letter spacing is not observed between the alphabets "S" and "M" present in the "Superscript" text.

Expected Result: Letter spacing should be observed between the alphabets "S" and "M" present in the "Superscript" text.

Note: Upon my own experimentation (trying to "Edit as HTML" in dev tools) I am not able to add any letter between the alphabets "S" and "M" and by the way it behaves like a single alphabet. If I am trying to delete a single Alphabet(either 'S' or 'M') both are getting deleted at a time.

Could you please help me whether we can consider this as a defect/bug since it is not following "Letter spacing (tracking) to at least 0.12 times the font size"?

[patrickhlauke]

not a failure, and also more generally note that the failure is not "text spacing doesn't change when you trigger the bookmarklet/try to change it" as such ... see https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/text-spacing.html#authorresp

[AmruthRaj-David]

Thank you for clarifying the situation regarding the "Service Mark" superscript text. Your explanation about the "℠" being a single Unicode character and the implications for CSS letter spacing is very helpful. It's important for users to understand that this is not a failure of the text spacing guidelines, but rather a limitation of how certain characters are represented in Unicode.

[TestPartners]

Also, ℠ is a single Unicode character so CSS cannot affect the letter spacing.

[AmruthRaj-David]

Thank you for pointing out that the "℠" is a single Unicode character. This is a crucial detail that explains why CSS cannot affect the letter spacing between the "S" and "M". Understanding these technical nuances helps in correctly interpreting compliance with text spacing guidelines.