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Re: G142 and spatial relations

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From: Mallory
Date: May 13, 2020 12:18PM

WCAG doesn't say anything about uniformly scaling, only that people can make text 200% larger, and that on a 1280px width viewport zoomed in to 400% OR a non-zoomed 320px width viewport, nothing's broken, unreadable or missing, with a note about users not needing to scroll horizontally to read text.

But if you can keep the page designs as similar as possible while reflowing, that's a good thing to do. If users may be zooming in and out and things move around so much that it's disorienting, maybe the designers can make another design. I don't know about other people but while I do have set zoom levels in my browsers, depending on the page I do zoom further in (and sometimes out, to find things). So it's not far-fetched to think there may be people switching between "mobile" and "desktop" layouts on desktop.

cheers,
_mallory

On Wed, May 13, 2020, at 4:59 PM, Aditya via WebAIM-Forum wrote:
> Thank you Patrick.
>
> From a user perspective, if a user sees some content and zooms to see
> it clearly but that content disappears somewhere ( under a menu or at
> the bottom of the page) isn't that disorientating?
>
> I thought upto 200% the page should scale uniformly and only after 200%
> the reflow/rearrangement has to happen.
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On May 12, 2020, at 7:39 PM, Patrick H. Lauke < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> >
> >> On 13/05/2020 00:19, Aditya via WebAIM-Forum wrote:
> >> G142 technique mentions "This technique requires that the zoom function preserves all spatial relationships on the page and that all functionality continues to be available"
> >> I'm confused about the spatial relationships part. At 200%, the last column of the page just wraps and moves to the end of the page. (Bootstrap)
> >> The DOM is unchanged but that content now is at the end of the page and users have to scroll all the way to the bottom.
> >> How can spatial relationship be maintained if page just reorders or reflows while zooming.
> >
> > Spatial relationship means that it's important that certain pieces of content are in a specific layout/arrangement in respect to each other.
> >
> > Say your content is laid out as a table. It's important that all rows/columns are correctly lined up, so it's clear which cell belongs to which row/column. If that were to fall apart after zooming (with an actual table column wrapping below/moving to the end of the page), then it would no longer be clear which what the relationship of that content is/which rows those cells belong to.
> >
> > If the content still makes sense though even when it rearranges itself to adapt to the changed viewport width, then there was no "spatial relationship" there...the position of pieces of content relative to each other was not important/wasn't what was conveying meaning/structure.
> >
> >> Is it a failure if content is placed at a different visual location but still has all the content and functionality based on "spatial relationships" phrase mentioned in G142.
> >
> > Not a failure.
> >
> >> Isn't it also a failure if a menu turns into a hamburger menu at 200% since spatial relationship has changed and content is moved under this hamburger dropdown.
> >>
> >
> > No, not a failure.
> >
> > P
> > --
> > Patrick H. Lauke
> >
> > https://www.splintered.co.uk/ | https://github.com/patrickhlauke
> > https://flickr.com/photos/redux/ | https://www.deviantart.com/redux
> > twitter: @patrick_h_lauke | skype: patrick_h_lauke
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > >