Re: Redesign Styles Hypocritical

--- On Tue, 12/1/09, Patrick H. Lauke <redux@splintered.co.uk> wrote:

> Again not taking sides, but worth adding that the page zoom
> functionality in IE 7 and 8 scales everything, even text set
> in absolute units, which in my mind satisfies 1.4.4 "text
> can be resized without assistive technology".

But page zoom and text scale are VERY different things, and we should remember to bear that in mind when discussing the two. Text scale increases the size of the text, flowing it according to the flexible rules built into HTML/CSS. Zoom just zooms in. OK, page zoom is SLIGHTLY more intelligent than that, but not by much.

Sometimes, I don't want images (and every other non-textual element on the page) to be scaled up. Sometimes (OK, ALL the time), I don't want sites to start requiring horizontal scrolling to read. I want the web to work like it's supposed to work, which is not some kind of hyperlinked PDF. Text scaling is far more palatable than page zooming, in my opinion.

1.4.4 should be considered a backup for extreme cases. If more than a pretty small percentage of your audience is choosing to (actually, "wanting to", which is harder to measure) up-size your text (whether scaling or zooming), you probably shouldn't have sized it down in the first place.

- Bobby

Received on Wednesday, 2 December 2009 18:10:52 UTC