- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 06:21:07 -0500 (EST)
- To: Anthony Quinn <anthony@frontend.com>
- cc: WAI Mailing list <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Hi Anthony, Because screens come in lots of different sizes, and people use lots of different fonts. In fact, many users magnify the content of their screen, and the result is that they are looking at something like 320x240 pixels, or 160x120, or they use a very large font (60pt, for example). If the layout is a fixed size, they will have to scroll in two directions to read content, which quickly becomes difficult. In combination with cognitive disabilities the need to move the screen around so much makes it very difficult to concentrate on what is actually being presented. If the layout is not a fixed size, then content can be easily "flowed" (laid out so that it fits the space available) by the browser to suit the user. Cheers Charles McCN On Thu, 2 Nov 2000, Anthony Quinn wrote: Hi All, I'm new to this group and was wondering if anyone can explain (in non technical lingo please) why fixed width sizing of web pages is a bad thing for accessibility. thanks in advance, Anthony _______________________________________________________ Anthony Quinn UI Design Manager Frontend ~ Usability Engineering & Interface Design 40 Westland Row, Dublin 2, Republic of Ireland Visit our Usability InfoCentre at: http://www.frontend.com/usability_infocentre/ anthony.quinn@frontend.com tel: +353 1 241 1600 http://www.frontend.com fax: +353 1 241 1601 _______________________________________________________ -- Charles McCathieNevile mailto:charles@w3.org phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136 W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia September - November 2000: W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France
Received on Thursday, 2 November 2000 06:21:09 UTC