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RE: kiosk and accessibility

for

From: John Foliot - WATS.ca
Date: Feb 9, 2006 9:30AM

Debbie Charles wrote:
> I'm just full of questions today! :)
>
> We have a group that is developing a kiosk that will be in a public
> location on campus. It will be 'touch screen' activated. Does anyone
> have
> any experience in how to make sure it is accessible?

Some years ago, I did demonstrations with a laptop computer equipped
with a touch screen. One thing that came up on a regular basis is the
"size" of your hyperlinks. If images, they should really be no less
than roughly 32px X 32px (there is a little wiggle room here), text
links should be no less than 6 - 8 letters (use a phrase rather than a
word whenever possible). Think chubby fingers vs. mouse pointer...

Given the kiosk nature of your user-agent, I would also suggest not
letting the "designers" make the font too small - in fact the default
16px* should be the baseline font size.

HTH

JF
--
John Foliot <EMAIL REMOVED>
Web Accessibility Specialist
WATS.ca - Web Accessibility Testing and Services
http://www.wats.ca
Phone: 1-613-482-7053

(* The W3C has specified 16px/96ppi as a standard default text size, and
most modern browsers on the Macintosh and Windows platforms have honored
that specification since 2000. See the W3C CSS1 Specifications at
www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-CSS1-19990111#length-units plus the Errata Notice
correcting the original CSS1 spec.:
www.w3.org/Style/css1-updates/REC-CSS1-19990111-errata.html )