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Fixed font-sizes and WAI or 508

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From: Lennart Borgman
Date: Jan 31, 2004 5:00PM

Hi,

I am new to this list and my knowledge of accessability is not the best.
Still I try to encourage web-site owners to follow the guidelines (maybe
there is a little narcissistic police man inside me;-). I mostly found to
obstacles, either that they are not aware of the guidelines or that the
web-designers think it is difficult to make good looking page if the
guidelines are followed (though I seldom get that answer explicitly).

I have been reading a little bit in this list's archive to find out what the
opinions about fixed font-sizes are. I found nothing that deviated to far
from my own thoughts. However I believed that the guidelines said that you
should not use fixed font-sizes. Can you please explain this to me?

The issue came up when I looked at the web page for Uppsala University
(http://www.uu.se/). The page can not be checked by Bobby for some reason.
As far as I can see (without actually looking at the code;-) they are using
fixed font-size. So I mailed them to ask if they knew about the guidelines.
Indeed they did, they had been getting good remarks from some vision
impaired and blind students.

They made me realise that there is much I don't know about this. How can
this be? My thought is that the problem can be quite different for those
with a slight vision impairment and those who are nearly blind. I would
really appreciate if someone could tell me "the story behind". How has this
been handled in groups working with WAI?

To make you better understand my question I can tell you that I am hearing
impaired. Beeing just a little bit hearing impaired, beeing much hearing
impaired and beeing death gives rise to some very different difficulties
(though some difficulties are of course common too).

- Lennart


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