WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Font size question

for

From: Joel Ward
Date: Oct 29, 2002 8:41AM


> The way he ended this last email makes it sound to me like he is expecting
me to make changes to the site. This site has been up for at least two
years, and this is the first time anyone has written to us with this issue.
I have viewed the site in IE, Opera and Netscape, and I think it's working
OK. I am not sure how to respond. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Is there a change I can make that will make everyone happy, including my
boss?

Did he tell you which font setting he was using in IE? It seems that the
"Smaller" font setting does make the text very small, but at "Medium" it is
just fine (aka "normal"). Also, is he overriding the font face in the
document? Different fonts may be different sizes. There might be something
else going on with his setup too.

Since you are using relative sizes, I'd be hesitant to make any changes to
your site without further testing or feedback. This person is the only one
who has complained, and the complaint seems to be half-baked (no offense,
but he CAN make his fonts bigger but he doesn't LIKE it). I never think it
is a good idea to change a web site after getting only one complaint from
one user, unless you can also see the issue yourself and the problem seems
valid. Since you can't fully understand his "problem," I don't think it's
wise to make any changes yet.

This is not to say that his issue is not valid, but at the outset it does
not seem as earth shattering as he says.

If you really want to do something, I'd test using 1em or just removing the
font size altogether from the stylesheet.

Just my thoughts...



----
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/