Thread Subject: Re: FONT SIZE 1-G

Note

This archival content is maintained by WebAIM and NCDAE on behalf of TEITAC and the U.S. Access Board . Additional details on the updates to section 508 and section 255 can be found at the Access Board web site.

From: Schomburg, Paul
Date: Fri, Mar 21 2008 8:50 AM

Gregg & Mary: The 4.5" screen size was not intended as a requirement
for portable devices, but as an explanatory note to justify excluding
devices that provide closed captions in accordance with FCC rules. Here
is what I wrote at the time this was added:

--------

Panasonic did a quick review of caption standards CEA-608 and CEA-708
that are referenced by the FCC rules. These requirements provide that
the display device must be able to display a total of 32 characters in a
single line. With a minimum size of 10 point text as outlined below, 32
characters can be displayed on as small as a 4.5" screen, but smaller
screen sizes would result in text below 10 points. Since this
requirement is fixed in FCC rules, and many source devices do not have
an integrated display (e.g. set-top boxes, etc.), there is no way for
such video source devices to state compliance for very small screen
sizes. Therefore, government agencies can best comply with this
requirement for closed captions by ensuring the screen used to display
video is larger than 4.5" diagonal, and I have added a note 6 to reflect
this.



I should also note that video source devices that are not covered by FCC
rules (e.g. media players without DTV tuners) may not be able to
guarantee compliance with this either. Such devices, such as DVD
players, often rely on the author of the content source (i.e. the DVD
disk) to define the text font and size choices, which may or may not
provide the capability to adjust text size to compensate for small
screen size. Therefore this requirement would need to be applied to the
content which an agency is authoring or providing to its employees. In
this case, content which is authored with CEA-608 or CEA-708 captions
(or functionally equivalent subtitles for the deaf & hard of hearing)
should not be ruled out of compliance either, because they will comply
when it is shown on displays larger than 4.5".

--------

Hope this explains why I suggested this note. I don't object to
removing it so long as an exemption for closed captions remains.



Thanks, Paul



Paul G. Schomburg, Sr. Manager

Tel: (202) 912-3800 x114; Cell: (202) 550-2230

WebAIM is an initiative of:
Center for Persons with Disabilities (CPD) Utah State University