RE: Action 1500 - fixed zoom

I see it as an accessibility issue for users with mild to moderate vision impairment (and everyone over 40).  Users should not be required to set a global setting to see a particular thing.  Global font settings also don't address the scenario where the too-small thing is not text.  Profile pictures are my favorite example, but icons, buttons and links are sometimes too small too.

I think we should make some recommendations, via WCAG techniques and failures, about where applications should support zooming, when it makes sense to override it with custom zooming, and when font sizing is sufficient.

Since I see it as an accessibility issue, I'm leery of a market argument.  Users with disabilities are too often in the 20% of the 80-20 rule.

From: James Nurthen [mailto:james.nurthen@oracle.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 8, 2014 3:06 PM
To: Cynthia Shelly; public-pfwg@w3.org
Subject: Re: Action 1500 - fixed zoom

For some apps I agree with you. For others I do not. This is why it should be an app-specific decision as to whether this is the right thing to do. I see zoom availability as a potential usability issue and not an accessibility issue, so long as there is a method to accomplish the text resize functionality. So IMO we should let the market decide if this is something that users want.

Regards,
James

On 10/8/2014 1:34 PM, Cynthia Shelly wrote:
I'm less convinced on this scenario.  It bugs me when apps on my phone won't zoom, frankly.  I don't want to set large fonts everywhere, but sometimes want to zoom in on a particular part of an app.  I see this as a shortcoming in the native apps, and not something to mimic in the web platform.  Zooming is temporary and specific, where system settings are permanent and pervasive.  They are very different user behaviors.  IMHO, both should be universally supported.

From: James Nurthen [mailto:james.nurthen@oracle.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 8, 2014 11:15 AM
To: public-pfwg@w3.org<mailto:public-pfwg@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Action 1500 - fixed zoom

A further type of applications where, in my opinion, it is legitimate to disable zooming are web applications which are attempting to mimic the look and feel of native apps.
On an iOS (I'm unsure how native apps look on other platforms) device, for example, native applications normally do not respond to zoom. Take a look at the iOS Settings application. We have developers who want their web apps to mimic native apps.
It is possible in Mobile Safari to use the fonts and the zooming levels specified by the OS by specifying various vendor-specific font styles in the style sheet. I would prefer to focus our attentions on ways to allow the user's font preferences to be used in web applications rather than working against a feature which actually can enhance usability when used in the correct ways in the correct types of applications.

Regards,
James


On 10/8/2014 10:45 AM, Cynthia Shelly wrote:
https://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/Group/track/actions/1500

I was given a couple of use cases where I think this is legitimate. 1) is a game like Cut the Rope, where multi-touch is used for game interaction rather than zooming. 2) is Bing Maps, where the default zooming behavior is disabled and the app has created custom zooming behavior in javascript. I still worry about authors misusing this for 'normal' apps where users would expect zooming. I think WCAG failures/techniques are probably the best path here. I will also look into documenting accessibility concerns for these features in MSDN.

IE supports the following ways to disable zooming.
* <meta name="viewport" content="user-scalable=no">
* <meta name="viewport" content="minimum-scale=1, maximum-scale=1">
* document.addEventListener("touchmove", function(e) {e.preventDefault()})
* html { touch-action: none; }
* html { -ms-content-zoom-limit-min: 1; -ms-content-zoom-limit-max: 1; }

--
Regards, James

[Oracle]<http://www.oracle.com>
James Nurthen | Principal Engineer, Accessibility
Phone: +1 650 506 6781<tel:+1%20650%20506%206781> | Mobile: +1 415 987 1918<tel:+1%20415%20987%201918>
Oracle Corporate Architecture
500 Oracle Parkway | Redwood City, CA 94065
[Green Oracle]<http://www.oracle.com/commitment>Oracle is committed to developing practices and products that help protect the environment

--
Regards, James

[Oracle]<http://www.oracle.com>
James Nurthen | Principal Engineer, Accessibility
Phone: +1 650 506 6781<tel:+1%20650%20506%206781> | Mobile: +1 415 987 1918<tel:+1%20415%20987%201918>
Oracle Corporate Architecture
500 Oracle Parkway | Redwood City, CA 94065
[Green              Oracle]<http://www.oracle.com/commitment>Oracle is committed to developing practices and products that help protect the environment