Testing guidelines for the resizing of text

Hello,

WCAG does not have clear testing guidelines for the resizing of text in a browser.


  *   When testing the resizing of text should I Zoom only or should I  increase text size in browsers too?
  *   If I resize text in a browser what condition or conditions should apply to the webpage when using Zoom, if any ?
  *   The verbiage "resize" and "zoom" are used interchangeably. Is there a distinction between the two words?
     *   1.4.4 suggests that when the verbiage "zoom" is used, then a user agent is being used to zoom in on text. Not necessarily, resize text.


The success criteria is below (but also use both words text resize and zoom), zoom with no parameters.

Examples of Success Criterion 1.4.4

*              A user with vision impairments increases the text size on a Web page in a browser from 1 em to 1.2 ems. While the user could not read the text at the smaller size, she can read the larger text. All the information on the page is still displayed when the larger font is used for the text.

*              A Web page contains a control for changing the scale of the page. Selecting different settings changes the layout of the page to use the best design for that scale.

*              A user uses a zoom function in his user agent to change the scale of the content. All the content scales uniformly, and the user agent provides scroll bars, if necessary.


Thank you,

Angela Savage
Accessibility Auditor
Office of Information Technology Services