WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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RE: Sizing

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: May 20, 2005 12:00PM

On Fri, 20 May 2005, HAA wrote:

> Would it be more acceptable to change the 9px for small or x-small?

Yes. Using 9px is criminal (or should be), x-small is foolish, and
small can be OK when used for less relevant text.

On the other hand, the real question is whether you (or, rather, your
users) need the fine print at all.

> As I
> have pointed out already, it occurs on EVERY page of the site but only some
> pages are failing.

I don't know how Bobby confuses you, but as usual, the purported
accessibility tool seems to have thrown you into problems. What's the
value of an accessibility tool that itself isn't accessible even to people
with "normal" (or better than normal) cognitive abilities?

The pages contain far too many irrelevant elements, and "irrelevant"
spells "distracting to all, seriously distracting to many". Does the
copyright statement really serve a useful purpose? Just putting it there
to be safe isn't safe to accessibility. In particular,
- "This site is Bobby approved" is worse than useless (even if true).
- The Webring stuff (one of the most prominent elements on the page)
is both a distraction and sign of a pathetic attempt at making a site
popular on grounds other than its usefulness.
- "Hosted by..." is always a distraction. There is no such thing as
a free lunch.
- "Go to top of page" is less foolish than the common obscurity "Top",
but useless, distracting, and space-consuming.

alt=" The New Chalet Club logo. " is questionable too. Does someone really
benefit from hearing or seeing it? You might have use for a good logo, but
a logo normally needs alt="" unless used as a heading or otherwise
_essential_ identification.

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/