RE: using relative units of measurement

In terms of meeting SC 1.4.4 Resize Text which allows for scrolling in the direction of text – yes modern browsers scale pixels and there are no material issues.

In terms of meeting WCAG 2.1 SC 1.4.10 reflow – I’d content that between fixed breakpoints of RWD with browser zoom you can run into issues when using fixed pixels for layout unless you have built in a lot of margin or many fixed breakpoints.

Jonathan

Jonathan Avila, CPWA
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Level Access
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From: Michellanne Li <michellanne.li@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 17, 2019 3:07 PM
To: WAI IG <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: using relative units of measurement

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Hello all,

The conventional wisdom is that we should code in relative units of measurement instead of pixels because the former can scale up and down in the browser when the user zooms in and out, and the latter can't.

However, on a whim, I tested out some code that used pixels and found that Chrome was able to scale it. I also tested this in Safari. Here is an example in codepen<https://codepen.io/michellanneli/pen/LYPZOvW> of a heading and text in a container that uses both pixels and ems.

Have browsers adapted to be able to scale pixels? Is coding in pixels no longer an a11y concern? (Obviously, there are other good reasons to code in relative units of measurement, but I'd like to focus on the a11y reasons in this discussion.)

Thanks!

Michellanne Li
(512) 718-2207
http://www.michellanne.com