RE: Solution for the Editor's Note on Adapting Text SC?

Stephen wrote:
> With regard to font, I don't see how this proposal is any different from what has been proposed and rejected in the past.  If we say any font, then what I need to do is go find the biggest font I can to test, which will surely draw objections again.  
> Am I missing something?

I don't think so, and a question that applies to both is: What techniques could an author use that prevents the user from changing font family or colours? (That isn't already covered, like text in images.)

There is no point in having a content SC to test whether a user can change something that the browser does allow them to change.

There is a point in having SC to make sure the results are usable when they have been changed.

I think we (mainly Wayne) showed pretty conclusively that changing font-family can be allowed for within the text-adaptation sizing specified. 

I.e. the sizes specified with letter & word spacing allow for a reasonable buffer, so someone selecting an unusually wide font not increase the letter-spacing as much to get a good result. That seemed to be a reasonable thing for users to do, according to the LVTF folks, as if you select a wider font you may not need as much spacing.


> With regard to color, if the note is absolving any loss of content due to contrast, then what other possible loss of content could occur by changing color?

The one that comes up (occasionally) is background images. E.g. you have a solid (or gradient) blue background with white text. The user changes the text colour to blue, and can't read it.

NB: This doesn't apply to CSS-colour based backgrounds which the user can change as easily as the text.
NB2: As a user you can remove all the backgrounds (as the high-contrast theme on Windows used to do), but that often introduces issues when the author relies on background images, such as CSS sprites.

I don't think Gregg's proposal helps as the author (who knows what the background image colour is), could simply choose a colour compatible with their site. However, the user with a browser plugin that automatically applies colour schemes would have no means of knowing that, and could end up with invisible text. On the testing side you would get different results.

Cheers,

-Alastair

Received on Wednesday, 13 September 2017 08:26:15 UTC