WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Books on making websites accessible?

for

From: Karl Groves
Date: Apr 18, 2008 6:00AM

> I think something like the Jello Mold
> (http://positioniseverything.net/articles/jello.html) approach that
> WebAIM uses is better - the page width adjusts based upon viewport
> size, but has both minimum and maximum widths to accommodate
> readability (not so narrow that things break and not so wide that it's
> difficult to read long lines of text).
>

Not to totally derail this thread, but I'd like to point out that the belief
that long lines of text is bad is rather unfounded. I've read a number of
usability studies which have come to the conclusion that reading performance
(speed and accuracy) does not differ significantly between line lengths[1].
Some studies indicate there is a preference difference but I'm not convinced
that's significant enough evidence to avoid long lines of text because by
shortening lines of text you also run into issues with content being pushed
below the fold. In my experience observing users in the lab, having
important content placed below the fold is far more likely to cause
information to go unnoticed by users.

1 - http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/textmargin.html is just one of maybe 8
studies I know of.

Karl Groves