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WCAG 1.4.8: horizontal scrolling

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From: Dan Conley
Date: Jan 20, 2011 8:51AM

I'm in the process of redoing my center's website, which means that it's
time for me to fully go through the WCAG 2.0 guidelines (the last big
redesign we did was when 2.0 was still in the discussion stages). I'm
confused by 1.4.8: part two states that lines be no more than 80
characters long. Okay, that makes sense.

But then part five says 'Text can be resized without assistive
technology up to 200 percent in a way that does not require the user to
scroll horizontally to read a line of text on a full-screen window.'

This, to me, says that my container div should not be measured in ems,
as a 200% increase in font size will definitely cause the window to
expand to the point requiring scrolling. My next instinct was to use
percentages for the container (as suggested in C24,
<http://bit.ly/fYe9Kl>;), but on a large monitor that would potentially
very easily cause long line lengths (violating part two above). Also, on
a smaller monitor (or on a window that isn't fullscreen), that causes
unnecessary whitespace around the content.

I could set it up with a min- and max-width, but they would probably be
fairly restrictive, and again: I think it's silly to have whitespace on
the side of a narrower window when a ~750px container would work fine.

So then, I'm left with the option of a fixed width pixel based layout,
which is pretty much the opposite of what I've always read to do. When
you increase the font size you don't have to scroll, and if I code it
properly the percentage-based widths inside for the content/sidebar
should still play nicely.

Have I totally misunderstood things? It seems like some of the W3C's
suggestions of how to meet the guidelines contradict each other.

--
Dan Conley
Information Manager
Center for International Rehabilitation Research Information and Exchange (CIRRIE)
University at Buffalo, Health Sciences Library B7
Phone: (716) 829-5728
<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://cirrie.buffalo.edu