Re: Relative Units for Font Size Scaling W3C requirement replaced by zoom techniques in new Browsers?

   aloha, stefan! zoom is to screen magnification as
simple text-to-speech engines are to screen readers...
zooming only earns a single-A compliance, in that
it provides a BASE functionality (zooming the viewport)
just as a simple TTS engine performs BASE functions
-- such as key echo, typing echo, announcing system
messages -- but it is NO substitute for a screen reader.
likewise, for those with vision over 20/200 zoom is
a great benefit, but those with less visual acuity
need software that will follow the flow defined for
the document, not merely zoom the viewport. likewise,
there are those who benefit from a limited viewport,
with high magnification and often high-contrast, who
benefit either from supplemental speech and/or aural
feedback in the form of pure sound cues, something
that zoom in IE7 and narrator on WinXP cannot provide.
narrator is better than nothing when one's main speech
engine freezes, crashes or just goes silent, but i
wouldn't use it to do online commerce or banking.
absolute font values should -- in my opinion -- be
relegated to the print media type, while the screen
media type should use relative measurements to accomodate
the user's desires -- even if a user is viewing text
at 75 times normal size, a change in font-size defined
using a percentage still applies to the zoomed text,
producing -- only on a larger scale -- the intended
intent. absolute pixel and point settings are meaningless
outside of the print media selector -- not to mention
direct derivatives of print conventions, which is
where it not only should remain, but where it belongs.
so, scaling of fonts according to percentage or using
em is still necessary, and is a concept that needs
desperately to be ported to the values defined for
aural CSS (or, if you prefer, CSS3-Speech Module)
instead of defining 50, on a scale of 0 to 100 as
the baseline from which aural styling starts to affect
aural rendering; increasing the richness, stress,
or pitch by degrees relative to whatever the users'
default settings are, would be a far more effective
means of fine-tuning aural style sheets gregory. -----------------------------------------------------------------
PEDESTRIAN, n. The variable (and audible) part of
the roadway for an automobile. -- Ambrose Bierce,
_The Devil's Dictionary_ -----------------------------------------------------------------
Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net Camera Obscura:
http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html UBATS: United
Blind Advocates for Talking Signs: http://ubats.org

 -- "He who lives on Hope, dies farting." -- Benjamin
Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack -- Gregory J. Rosmaita,
unagi69@concentric.net Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/