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Re: Question from Newbie

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From: Gunlaug Sørtun
Date: May 28, 2008 12:40PM

Kathy McKelvie wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am a newbie to the web accessibility area and am hoping to get some
> direction as I am at a loss where to start. I have taken a web site
> over and have been asked to make this website more "friendly".
> Allowing users to increase/decrease font size etc. with the click of
> a button (or link). Currently this web site contains a stylesheet
> where the fonts are hard-coded.
>
> My questions are:
>
> 1) Do I create various copies of the same web page (ex: contact.htm)
> and have them set to various font sizes?

No.

> 2) Can I change the hard-coded font sizes to percentages in the
> current stylesheet?

Yes. Preferably at or close to 'font-size: 100%;' all the way through
(for regular body-text), as that's the most "friendly" starting point.
Do not forget to declare 'line-height' friendly too. Somewhere around
'line-height: 1.4;' will work well in most cases.

Check how it all turns out when resized quite a bit in various browsers.
They all have one or more font-resizing options built in - somewhere.

You _can_ also add a stylesheet switcher, as long as the basic
stylesheet allows font-resizing in the browsers regardless of such a
switcher.
The simplest (and oldest) switch-version is found here...
<http://www.alistapart.com/stories/alternate/>;
...but there are plenty of alternatives around.

regards
Georg
--
http://www.gunlaug.no