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Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px

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From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Apr 11, 2013 2:29PM


2013-04-11 22:15, Angela French wrote:

> It appears that IE 9 (IE 10?) still does not increase font size
> when css is in pixels.

That is correct and applies to IE 10, too. Using IE controls to increase
font size can be conceptually regarded as a way of setting the basic
font size, the root elements initial font size. So anything that is
defined ultimately with reference to parent element's font size will get
scaled, but if you set font size to 16px or to 12pt, it stays that way.

> Is this considered an accessibility failure considering one can zoom
instead?

The accessibility problem is primarily caused by authors who set font
size in physical units. IE might be guilty of not helping well to fight
against such problems.

In IE, the ways to override px, pt, or mm settings for font size are:

1) Zooming, as discussed in this thread. Often not good enough, since it
also scales things other than text.

2) In IE settings, use the Accessibility section to override font sizes
specified on pages. This is rather drastic and may seriously break
layout (on pages that have not been designed to adapt to varying font
sizes).

3) Write a user style sheet with font size settings, with the !important
specifier. This is drastic too. Unlike method 2, it lets you specify the
exact font size(s) to be used, instead of selecting among just five
different sizes.

Yucca