Re: web accessibility: reports from Québec and Belgium

On Sun, 09 Dec 2007 14:50:20 +0100, David Woolley  
<forums@david-woolley.me.uk> wrote:

> David Woolley wrote:
>
>> I have several times seen this used as excuse for using pixels. I've  
>> also seen the zoom facility (which introduces scrolling problems) as  
>> excuse for allowing pixels (and that from one of the major W3C list  
>> contributors).
>
> For completeness, this is the article to which I was alluding:
>
> <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2007Nov/0086.html>
>
> This is by one of main developers of Opera saying that pixels sizes are  
> not an accessibility problem, except with IE, with the implication that  
> zooming mitigates all problems.

Calling Lachy one of the main developers at Opera is stretching  
credibility a little. He's only been there ten weeks, and he actually  
works on Quality Assurance and on Standards. But anyway...

He's right in his claim - px are not inherently a problem for scaling.  
Opera and Amaya have both been scaling them happily for years. And I don't  
know what you are using to read the further implication that somehow zoom  
alone solves all further problems - it isn't anywhere in the message you  
quoted.

Px can complicate things like user styling or interesting liquid layouts.  
In the real world the problem is slowly decreasing, as things like Opera's  
fit-to-width resolve more complex problems too. If the second most popular  
browser has now got the basics right, I guess we can expect the problems  
to go away in maybe half a decade, or perhaps a bit faster if people could  
easily switch to a browser that actually suits their needs.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
     je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
http://my.opera.com/chaals              Try the Kestrel - Opera 9.5 alpha

Received on Sunday, 9 December 2007 14:57:45 UTC