RE: Screen Magnification

[Phill wrote]

Ø  My point is that it is not the case that fixed point necessarily supports or prevents the responsive reflow.  It is that the browser changes (or forces) the fixed width so that the pages design responds and reflows.  As I mentioned earlier, if a user were to tell the browser to behave as if

Yes, many responsive sites do use fixed sizes - and while responsive sites can be helpful to people with low vision it doesn't guarantee a solution to the problem of text reflow.   I apologize that I brought up this topic in the other thread because it seems to have confused the point - I more brought it up as an aside.  In regards to non-responsive sites - fixed positioned content and containers in my opinion cause issues because the browser may not know where to reflow and extend the container in a way that is safe to not overlap other content or break functionality.  This was a WCAG 1 checkpoint that got dropped bumped to WCAG 2 AAA  because browsers zoom improved.

It would be good to have some techniques around responsive design and break points.  However, we still need an extension that causes authors to make sure user agents have enough information to provide reflow of text within a page when the text can be read in a linear fashion.
Jonathan

--
Jonathan Avila
Chief Accessibility Officer
SSB BART Group
jon.avila@ssbbartgroup.com<mailto:jon.avila@ssbbartgroup.com>
Phone 703.637.8957
Follow us: Facebook<http://www.facebook.com/#!/ssbbartgroup> | Twitter<http://twitter.com/#!/SSBBARTGroup> | LinkedIn<http://www.linkedin.com/company/355266?trk=tyah> | Blog<http://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog> | Newsletter<http://eepurl.com/O5DP>

From: Phill Jenkins [mailto:pjenkins@us.ibm.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2015 5:59 PM
To: WAI Interest Group
Subject: Re: Screen Magnification

Laura repeated Jon:
>  I'm not sure that WCAG does all it can do,
> since it currently allows fixed sized
> containers and text and fixed position content.

Jon said:
> I've been pleased that desktop browsers are using the zoom to change the viewport size
> and thus trigger responsive pages to respond on zoom.

I mentioned this a few posts or weeks ago.  I think we need to recommend some advisory techniques here that take advantage of the current responsive design paradigms.  We have a combination of several things occuring together.  Designers designing pages that respond well to the desktop viewport, the tablet viewport, and the phone viewport, commonly called "breakpoints" in the design world.  And, I beieve all these are done with fixed size containers, but not always.  My point is that it is not the case that fixed point necessarily supports or prevents the responsive reflow.  It is that the browser changes (or forces) the fixed width so that the pages design responds and reflows.  As I mentioned earlier, if a user were to tell the browser to behave as if it were a phone, then the content 'reflows" to a singluar  column, grids (data tables) become cards, etc. such that the user expereince works well for a narrow viewport.  If the browser were to allow the user to also (in addition to)  increase the fonts and zoom at the same time on the desktop, but tricking the page to think it was still in phone mode, then a very large single column view would work with just the browser.  That is the requirement I would like to add to UAAG.  And I believe that is the behavior many end users with low vision want to expereince.

I think it is simply leting the user specify 3 block text widths: desktop, tablet, and phone; but be able to use any one of them while still on a desktop or tablet.  If the user sets the font too large then there will be horizontal scrolling, but there has to be a narrow limit at some point, and I'm suggsting the limit be the phone potrait viewport initially.

So the test could be something like: When in phone viewport, the page and text block reflows by the browser and can suport zoom to 4X with loss of functionality.
____________________________________________
Regards,
Phill Jenkins,
IBM Accessibility