I’m not sure what you think I mean by “signaling”. This is a study of OCR performance, with no attempt to measure practical accessibility issues caused by the font difference which you and I agree is not big. I’m still very skeptical that even a single State Department employee’s ability to do a good job depends on which font the department uses.

If you say that it doesn’t matter whether changing the font had a large practical impact, because it’s a gesture in the right direction or helps build a culture of accessibility, I would classify that as signaling.

Classify it how you like, but a gesture towards building a culture of accessibility (if indeed that’s what this was) is hardly comparable to an attempt to score points against political opponents.