Re: Responsive Design should be required

Hi Wayne,

I generally agree, I think that responsive web design (RWD) is the best way to support low vision users and others across a variety of devices [1].

I would nit-pick a little on this point:
"At the time WCAG 2.0 was approved most drafters of the guidelines could not perceive the problem.”

To get the historical context, I don’t think it was about perceiving the problem, it was the lack of viable solution.

A key technology required by RWD is CSS media queries, and in the browsers most people used at the time, they were not supported. Without media queries the contortions you had to make for layouts to work at 200% text-size or zoom were not feasible beyond very simple sites. I know this because we spent a lot of time on ‘liquid layouts’ from 2001-2009!

Now there is a mechanism to change layout at different viewport sizes (and therefore zoom levels), I would like to see WCAG2 1.4.4 updated so that horizontal scrolling at 200% is a fail at level-AA.

That might be possibly be through the understanding / techniques documents, as the normative text says "text can be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality”. So we would need to  bring in horizontal scrolling within certain parameters as “loss of content” in the non-normative documents.

Kind regards,

-Alastair

1] https://alastairc.ac/2013/08/browser-zoom-great-for-accessibility/