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Re: text only zoom

for

From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Jun 20, 2016 10:26AM

> The only reason (use-case) I've heard to use text-sizing in the context of responsive design is _mallory's, where large blurry images are difficult to deal with. Are there others?

Another case to consider is some responsive implementations assume the user is on a mobile and hide, or layer functionality behind menus and focus on mobile tasks, etc. When in fact the low vision user may be accessing the site from a desktop and may not be on a touch screen, etc. I could also envision benefits to text resize for main body content but perhaps not other elements -- much like some browser's reader mode. Making assumptions based on the viewport width while not to specific to RWD could be an issue that people associate with the practice.

Jonathan

Jonathan Avila
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SSB BART Group 
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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Alastair Campbell
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2016 12:03 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] text only zoom

Chaals McCathie Nevile wrote:

> I'd definitely urge everybody to put the focus on responsive design.
>>
>
> Right…


Definitely, and at last!


Responsive design that doesn't consider text-only zoom seems to be a bit
> broken still.
>

I'm not entirely clear what you mean here. It is very hard to do both, as only RWD really gives you options for changing the layout when expanding.

With text-sizing it meant having buffers around text, but you need media queries (or some very funky floats) to change the interface without RWD.

The only good examples I know of RWD sites that also handle text-sizing are ones where it is made equivalent. For example (and from a quick look), theguardian.com sizes everything in EMs, so zoom and text-sizing are the same.

Does that help? In that case there is effectively no text-only sizing, as images and layout also scale with text size.


Is text-only zoom really dead? I might be on a limb, but I'm not inclined
> to write it off.
>

The only reason (use-case) I've heard to use text-sizing in the context of responsive design is _mallory's, where large blurry images are difficult to deal with. Are there others?

To me, the solution for large blurry images would be to keep them sharp.
The picture element [1] seems to have good support now [2], perhaps we can push for zoomed image to use the higher resolution versions?

-Alastair

1] http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/responsive/picture-element/
2] http://caniuse.com/#feat=picture