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Re: Increase Font Size vs. Zoom

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From: GF Mueden
Date: Nov 8, 2012 7:58PM

I use Win7 and IE9 and I don't even know if Text Size choice is
available. I used to use it but not since zooming has beem made so easy.

I am usually set for about 175% and use Ctl+Plus if I need more. As I go
up the zooming will take a long line off the screen, unless word wrap
has been provided. Failure to provide it is a "Shoemaker's Child"
problem, presented by sites that you would think would know better.

Limited visual fields may come about because of retinal damage or poor
acuity. My one eye is ten inches away from a 14 inch wide screen, a
very wide angle. I need to minimize, pull in the margins, and have word
wrap within the narrower column. Guess who won't let me? The AFB,
whose head of site operations is blind and probably uses a screen
reader. Their AccessWorld has long articles with word wrap, but only
for full screen width. If I minimize they truncate the lines.

Recently I have seen zooming within a column. I wish I had made a note
of who did it. It was very helpful.

===gm==

On 11/8/2012 5:30 PM, David Ashleydale wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I generally try to ensure that web pages I work on are readable when
> someone increases the font size, by using something like IE's View-Text
> Size-Largest functionality. But now that modern browsers all let users zoom
> the entire page, I'm wondering how much effort still needs to be put in to
> ensuring that a page is readable when a user just increases the font size.
>
> I talked to someone with low vision at the last CSUN that said that he
> almost exclusively just increases the font size because zooming causes the
> page's width to expand, thereby making him have to scroll left and right
> continuously in order to read the page. It makes sense, but that's a
> usability study of one. So I wanted to check with y'all and hear your
> thoughts.
>
> We would pretty much have to completely redesign most of our company's site
> in order to get it to work with large fonts. HTML containers are not very
> forgiving. In a lot of cases, the container stays the same size and the
> text just flows out of it, either behind or on top of other text when the
> font size is increased.
>
> How important on a scale of 1 (not important) to 5 (very important) is this
> issue nowadays? Is it just a nice to have because of the zooming workaround?
>
> Looking forward to hearing your opinions.
>
> Thanks!
> David Ashleydale
> > > >