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Test Criteria for 1.4.4 Resize Text for native apps

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From: Capra, Miranda
Date: Jun 11, 2020 10:19AM

This thread is a follow-on to Glen Walker's recent thread on a similar topic. Apologies for not replying to that thread, but I only just joined this forum so I can post instead of lurk.

We are developing formal criteria for native apps to satisfy 1.4.4 Resize Text. We would like to make sure that our apps support operating system text size (iOS) or font size (Android) to 200% compared to the default without truncation, overlap, or horizontal scrolling. We have determined that AX2, the second text size in the accessible text settings, results in body text scaled to 200% in both iOS and Android. Because of how dynamic text sizing works in native apps, large text used in headings increases less than that, but we felt that body text was most important because it is smallest and most difficult to read. Also in Android there's a complexity about the display size setting and you can get some pretty big text by mixing font size and display size...I'm acknowledging that that's another route for increasing text size, but deferring it as too complicated to pull into this discussion for now.

I have two questions for this group.

1. At 200% increase in font scaling, do you adjust the screen layout in your native app if long words and numbers have a mid-word line break? For example, if you have a two-column layout with dates and descriptions, do you keep the two-column layout or drop to a single column? In responsive web design we drop to a single column, but my developers tell me that this kind of reflow is much more difficult in native apps. Since screen magnification is readily available in native apps, I'm having a difficult time making the case to also provide complete support for text scaling.

2. If you allow some awkward visual formatting at 200%, does anyone have guidance on what level of text scaling should be seamlessly supported? A natural cutoff would be the largest non-accessible text size, but I'd prefer something backed by data, given the dev burden of reflow in native apps. Know of any sources of analytics or research commonly used text size settings?


- Miranda


Miranda Capra, PhD, CPWA
AVP, Principal Design Researcher | BB&T now Truist
3201 Beechleaf Ct., Tower 2, Fl. 5, Raleigh, NC 27604
Email: <EMAIL REMOVED>



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