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Re: Font Resizers (WAS RE: back to top)

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Jan 11, 2006 4:29PM

On Wed, 11 Jan 2006, Penny Roberts wrote:

> Our public
> workstations are (deliberately) set up so that settings cannot be changed.
> We also have PCs used by numerous members of staff so each member of staff
> would have to reset to their own preference every time. It just isn't
> practical.

Do you mean that it is practical to force users to learn to use the
site-specific widgets (for font size control etc.) on each site
separately - on the minority of pages that have them, and just accept
the "one size fits all" policy on other pages? It's not just a matter of
learning the widgets and finding them but also actually using them
over and over again when moving from one site to another (or perhaps even
from one page to another).

Fixing settings is surely hostile to accessibility, and when coupled with
similar actions taken by authors (who might set font size to 9px for
example), it really creates obstacles.

If you regard it as a problem that users change the settings (and of
course it is a problem, especially as long as browsers have no easy "reset
all settings" function or, better still, a simple way to load an
individual user's preferences from somewhere), the _fixing_ them is about
the worst thing you can do - a really Procrustean move.

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