RE: Minimum font size requirement or guideline for accessibility

Yes, variability in how content is rendered is not something authors have direct control over, but this does not prevent designers and developers from specifying a baseline font size of 16px regardless of whether WCAG offers such a recommendation ... this should be considered a de facto standard.

I would expect developers to understand these variables and their interactions from a technical perspective, and designers and accessibility professionals at least to be aware of them.

The description of the CSS reference pixel offers guidance to mitigate these variables and should also be something that web professionals are using to inform their practice.

It's worth noting that all graphical user agents ultimately must convert relative units into absolute numeric values so as to be able to render content, but each does this slightly differently, especially with regards to container sizing. 




-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick H. Lauke <redux@splintered.co.uk> 
Sent: Wednesday, March 8, 2023 11:52 PM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: Minimum font size requirement or guideline for accessibility

Note that minimum font size and what is/isn't comfortably legible in the real world will heavily depend on other factors - average viewing distance, physical dimensions of the screen, effective resolution of the screen, any zoom factor involved, etc. A lot of these variables are outside of the direct control/knowledge of authors (compared to closed systems, where many of these aspects are far more controlled).

P
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Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Thursday, 9 March 2023 02:59:03 UTC