April 28, 2004
Font-size Widgets: An Accessibility Hack?
Six months ago, I went in for an eye exam. I usually enjoy the part with the dilating drops. Sitting in the chair and looking around the room I commented on how trippy it is being unable to focus your eyes on anything. The doctor said "Its a good preview to life in your 40's". After a minor panic attack about inevitability of growing old, it occurred to me: is this how people over 40 have to look at the web?
I can't tell you how many times co-workers, aunts, grandparents, even my father-in-law complain about how hard it is to read text on a computer screen. Often, what is a perfectly legible font-size to me, is hard for them to read. It gets worse when I tell them how to change the text-size in their browser, only for them to complain that it didn't work.
Why? Because Interenet Explorer doesn't adjust fonts set to pixel-width, which is a very popular way to define font-sizes on the web for cross-browser and platform consistency. Alas, with a little CSS and Javascript, someone cleverly devised a way around IE's shortfall by providing an interface widget to control text sizes! Essentially, an accessibility hack.
Yesterday, Keith Robinson asked whether "font-size widgets are truly useful". For users caught in the IE/pixel-width font trap, I'd say it is more than useful, its necessary.
With better browser support, the encouraged solution is to set font-sizes using EMs. But many web designers still insist on using pixel-width declarations, either for design purposes or simply unwillingness to try a new method.
Therefore, if your site's target audience demographic is over 40, and the designer insists on defining fonts by pixel, a font-size widget should be a requirement. It is a small design cost for adding a level of accessibility that your target audience needs.
- Posted in:
- Web Design
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