- From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-hwg@idyllmtn.com>
- Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 09:29:55 -0700
- To: Jamie Fox <jfox@fenix2.dol-esa.gov>
- Cc: "'Web Accessibility Initiative'" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
At 11:41 a.m. 08/14/98 -0400, Jamie Fox wrote: >How problematic for accessibility is it to specify font size? I have heard >that doing so may prevent users from specifying their own font size in some >browsers. Is this true? If so, which ones. Thanks for your attention. All browsers allow the user to set their own default font and default font size. (Well, not Lynx, and I don't know about pwWebSpeak -- let's say "all browsers that use fonts as a means of presentation.") This includes Navigator, IE, and Opera. When using fonts, you should (in my opinion) always specify relative fonts ("-1", "+2") or use stylesheets (which can be turned off or overridden) rather than absolute font values such as FONT SIZE="4" or FONT SIZE="2". SMALL and BIG are also preferable. Opera is particularly nice when dealing with too-small fonts (as when some pages abuse really small text to fit menus on the screen), as each web page window has a pulldown option as part of the status bar, which allows to to specify a scaling factor, from 100% (default, unless you change it) to 150% or 200% or more, or down the other way to 80%, 50%, etc. -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@hwg.org> Vice President, Marketing and Outreach, HTML Writers Guild http://www.hwg.org
Received on Friday, 14 August 1998 12:23:07 UTC