On Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken ordered all employees of the State Department to end the use of Times New Roman font in official documents, claiming that using such a font would undermine the department’s efforts towards “disability inclusion.”
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the department-wide memo, titled “The Times (New Roman) are a-Changin,” demands that all employees instead start using the less-popular Calibri font, with Blinken claiming, without evidence, that this font is easier to read for those who have reading disabilities or eyesight problems.
Blinken further claimed, again with no proof, that Times New Roman – widely considered the most popular font in the world for typed documents – can cause “visual recognition issues for individuals with learning disabilities.” The order from the Secretary’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion described Calibri as an “accessibility best practice.”
The last time the State Department officially changed fonts was in January of 2004, when the then-default font of Courier New 12 was changed to Times New Roman.
The implementation of such an insignificant rule change for the purposes of “diversity” comes as the U.S. faces numerous foreign crises, from the ongoing war in Ukraine to rising tensions with China, the latter of which Blinken is scheduled to visit in February.