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Thread: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
Number of posts in this thread: 33 (In chronological order)
From: Angela French
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 1:15PM
Subject: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
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Hello,
It appears that IE 9 (IE 10?) still does not increase font size when css is in pixels. Is this considered an accessibility failure considering one can zoom instead?
Thank you,
Angela French
Internet Specialist
State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
360-704-4316
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
http://www.checkoutacollege.com/
From: Al Sparber
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 1:27PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
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On 4/11/2013 3:15 PM, Angela French wrote:
> Hello,
>
> It appears that IE 9 (IE 10?) still does not increase font size when
> css is in pixels. Is this considered an accessibility failure
> considering one can zoom instead?
If the default behavior was to zoom text only, I would consider it an
accessibility issue. But since the IE9 defaults to page zoom as its
default, I personally do not consider it an accessibility issue. That
said, I tend to use em units anyway :-)
I also think that when Firefox switches to the Webkit platform, its
option to zoom text only will disappear.
--
Al Sparber - PVII
http://www.projectseven.com
The Leader in Responsive Tools for Dreamweaver
Since 1998
From: David Ashleydale
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 1:39PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
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I spoke to someone at CSUN last year that pointed out that zooming in on
the entire page is not all that helpful to him. He has very low vision and
he does need to increase the size of the text on a page fairly
significantly in order to read it. However, when you use page zoom, you end
up having to scroll left and right in order to read text and that gets old
really fast. It's very easy to lose your place when you have to do that.
So he always uses text zoom only so that nothing else on the page gets
bigger -- the page does not get wider. The text gets bigger and enlarges
its containers vertically, not horizontally. This causes the text to wrap
more, but it at least always stay in view.
Of course, he runs into numerous problems with this when web designers use
fixed container sizes and fonts specified in pixels. Almost every site I've
tried this on breaks when the text size gets too large. His dream is to get
pages to become more liquid so that the text flows more logically when it
is increased.
David Ashleydale
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 12:27 PM, Al Sparber < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >wrote:
> On 4/11/2013 3:15 PM, Angela French wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > It appears that IE 9 (IE 10?) still does not increase font size when
> > css is in pixels. Is this considered an accessibility failure
> > considering one can zoom instead?
>
> If the default behavior was to zoom text only, I would consider it an
> accessibility issue. But since the IE9 defaults to page zoom as its
> default, I personally do not consider it an accessibility issue. That
> said, I tend to use em units anyway :-)
>
> I also think that when Firefox switches to the Webkit platform, its
> option to zoom text only will disappear.
>
> --
> Al Sparber - PVII
> http://www.projectseven.com
> The Leader in Responsive Tools for Dreamweaver
> Since 1998
> > > >
From: Elle Waters
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 1:44PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
David:
That's super helpful insight. Thank you for sharing!
-Elle
On Apr 11, 2013, at 12:39 PM, David Ashleydale < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> I spoke to someone at CSUN last year that pointed out that zooming in on
> the entire page is not all that helpful to him. He has very low vision and
> he does need to increase the size of the text on a page fairly
> significantly in order to read it. However, when you use page zoom, you end
> up having to scroll left and right in order to read text and that gets old
> really fast. It's very easy to lose your place when you have to do that.
>
> So he always uses text zoom only so that nothing else on the page gets
> bigger -- the page does not get wider. The text gets bigger and enlarges
> its containers vertically, not horizontally. This causes the text to wrap
> more, but it at least always stay in view.
>
> Of course, he runs into numerous problems with this when web designers use
> fixed container sizes and fonts specified in pixels. Almost every site I've
> tried this on breaks when the text size gets too large. His dream is to get
> pages to become more liquid so that the text flows more logically when it
> is increased.
>
> David Ashleydale
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 12:27 PM, Al Sparber < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >wrote:
>
>> On 4/11/2013 3:15 PM, Angela French wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> It appears that IE 9 (IE 10?) still does not increase font size when
>>> css is in pixels. Is this considered an accessibility failure
>>> considering one can zoom instead?
>>
>> If the default behavior was to zoom text only, I would consider it an
>> accessibility issue. But since the IE9 defaults to page zoom as its
>> default, I personally do not consider it an accessibility issue. That
>> said, I tend to use em units anyway :-)
>>
>> I also think that when Firefox switches to the Webkit platform, its
>> option to zoom text only will disappear.
>>
>> --
>> Al Sparber - PVII
>> http://www.projectseven.com
>> The Leader in Responsive Tools for Dreamweaver
>> Since 1998
>> >> >> > > >
From: John Foliot
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 1:52PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
Al Sparber wrote:
>
> I also think that when Firefox switches to the Webkit platform, its
> option to zoom text only will disappear.
>
Hey Al,
Are you privy to some information we don't know? I personally doubt this
will ever happen.
JF
From: Angela French
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 1:56PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
>
>So he always uses text zoom only so that nothing else on the page gets bigger
>-- the page does not get wider. The text gets bigger and enlarges its
>containers vertically, not horizontally. This causes the text to wrap more, but it
>at least always stay in view.
>
>Of course, he runs into numerous problems with this when web designers use
>fixed container sizes and fonts specified in pixels. Almost every site I've tried
>this on breaks when the text size gets too large. His dream is to get pages to
>become more liquid so that the text flows more logically when it is increased.
>
>David Ashleydale
>
I'm doing some accessibility testing on a new web app and Zooming works really well in used on site designed using responsive design techniques.
Angela French
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 2:18PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
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2013-04-11 22:56, Angela French wrote:
> I'm doing some accessibility testing on a new web app and Zooming
> works really well in used on site designed using responsive design
> techniques.
This really depends on how the responsive design has been done. Many
principles and techniques are nowadays said to be responsive. It also
depends on what zooming really means.
In browsers, zooming normally does not mean just scaling everything,
preserving all proportions, as that would not be very useful. Instead,
font size and simple elements like images are scaled. This means that
the layout is not necessarily preserved, and text may get reflown. This
differs from changing font size, and it really depends which one is more
suitable.
Yucca
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 2:29PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
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2013-04-11 22:15, Angela French wrote:
> It appears that IE 9 (IE 10?) still does not increase font size
> when css is in pixels.
That is correct and applies to IE 10, too. Using IE controls to increase
font size can be conceptually regarded as a way of setting the basic
font size, the root elements initial font size. So anything that is
defined ultimately with reference to parent element's font size will get
scaled, but if you set font size to 16px or to 12pt, it stays that way.
> Is this considered an accessibility failure considering one can zoom
instead?
The accessibility problem is primarily caused by authors who set font
size in physical units. IE might be guilty of not helping well to fight
against such problems.
In IE, the ways to override px, pt, or mm settings for font size are:
1) Zooming, as discussed in this thread. Often not good enough, since it
also scales things other than text.
2) In IE settings, use the Accessibility section to override font sizes
specified on pages. This is rather drastic and may seriously break
layout (on pages that have not been designed to adapt to varying font
sizes).
3) Write a user style sheet with font size settings, with the !important
specifier. This is drastic too. Unlike method 2, it lets you specify the
exact font size(s) to be used, instead of selecting among just five
different sizes.
Yucca
From: Angela French
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 2:36PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
>
>This really depends on how the responsive design has been done. Many
>principles and techniques are nowadays said to be responsive. It also depends
>on what zooming really means.
>Yucca
>
>
Responsive design in this case is done using Twitter Bootstrap (which apparently uses pixels for setting font size)
Angela French
From: Monique Brunel
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 2:45PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
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Le 11/04/2013 21:52, John Foliot a écrit :
> Al Sparber wrote:
>>
>> I also think that when Firefox switches to the Webkit platform, its
>> option to zoom text only will disappear.
>>
>
> Hey Al,
>
> Are you privy to some information we don't know? I personally doubt this
> will ever happen.
>
> JF
Hi,
Firefox won't switch to Webkit.
Among many others, you can read this
http://robert.ocallahan.org/2013/02/and-then-there-were-three.html
by Robert OCallahan, C++ developers at Mozilla
But maybe you think about iOS
http://news.cnet.com/8301-14013_3-57573440/mozilla-says-no-plans-to-return-to-ios/
Friendly,
Monique
--
Monique Brunel
Accessibilité et qualité des sites Web - Mozilla Rep
Conférences - Ateliers - Conseil - Tél. +32(0)473 25 81 94
| http://blog.webatou.info | http://aliaz.com/monique-brunel |
| www.opquast.com | www.openweb.eu.org | www.mozilla-belgium.org |
From: Al Sparber
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 3:31PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
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On 4/11/2013 3:39 PM, David Ashleydale wrote:
> Of course, he runs into numerous problems with this when web designers use
> fixed container sizes and fonts specified in pixels. Almost every site I've
> tried this on breaks when the text size gets too large. His dream is to get
> pages to become more liquid so that the text flows more logically when it
> is increased.
Then the page would behave like a page zoom - logically speaking, of
course :-)
The bottom line is that if someone has problems with smaller text, he or
she will have taken the time to explore the accessibility options built
into his or her computers and browsers.
From: Al Sparber
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 3:33PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
On 4/11/2013 3:52 PM, John Foliot wrote:
> Al Sparber wrote:
>>
>> I also think that when Firefox switches to the Webkit platform, its
>> option to zoom text only will disappear.
>>
>
> Hey Al,
>
> Are you privy to some information we don't know? I personally doubt this
> will ever happen.
They have announced a move to Webkit - but I am making an assumption on
them dropping the text zoom, which either does not exist in other Webkit
browsers or is so difficult to find that it's not at all obvious to me.
From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 3:34PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
On 11/04/2013 22:33, Al Sparber wrote:
> On 4/11/2013 3:52 PM, John Foliot wrote:
>> Al Sparber wrote:
>>>
>>> I also think that when Firefox switches to the Webkit platform, its
>>> option to zoom text only will disappear.
[...]
> They have announced a move to Webkit - but I am making an assumption on
> them dropping the text zoom, which either does not exist in other Webkit
> browsers or is so difficult to find that it's not at all obvious to me.
I think you're confusing them with Opera...
P
--
Patrick H. Lauke
From: Al Sparber
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 3:36PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
On 4/11/2013 5:33 PM, Al Sparber wrote:
> They have announced a move to Webkit - but I am making an assumption on
> them dropping the text zoom, which either does not exist in other Webkit
> browsers or is so difficult to find that it's not at all obvious to me.
>
Allow me to slap myself in the head. Opera is moving to Webkit. Firefox
has made no such announcement. Excuse me while I brew some very robust
French roast :-)
From: Steve Green
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 3:40PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
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Zooming text only is perfect for me, and I hope they don't drop it. I only need it on a small percentage of websites and I work on dozens of machines that are shared by other people so I don't want to mess with settings in the OS or browser.
Zooming the whole page is useless in so many ways. Horizontal scrolling and increased line length are obvious ones, and there is no benefit (for me) in having larger images. It also requires far greater mouse movement.
Steve Green
-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Al Sparber
Sent: 11 April 2013 22:31
To: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] IE doesn't increase font-size in px
On 4/11/2013 3:39 PM, David Ashleydale wrote:
> Of course, he runs into numerous problems with this when web designers
> use fixed container sizes and fonts specified in pixels. Almost every
> site I've tried this on breaks when the text size gets too large. His
> dream is to get pages to become more liquid so that the text flows
> more logically when it is increased.
Then the page would behave like a page zoom - logically speaking, of course :-)
The bottom line is that if someone has problems with smaller text, he or she will have taken the time to explore the accessibility options built into his or her computers and browsers.
From: Al Sparber
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 3:40PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
On 4/11/2013 4:36 PM, Angela French wrote:
> Responsive design in this case is done using Twitter Bootstrap (which apparently uses pixels for setting font size)
Twitter bootstrap is simply fashionable, which has nothing to do with
quality :-) Here is a responsive design that allows text size zooming in IE:
http://www.projectseven.com/products/templates/pagepacks/dmm/affinity/affinity-themes/boardroom/layout-3-01.htm
It simply requires vigilance in using proportional measures. What you do
not want to do, however, is use ems for element width as that can
produce usability issues for anyone increasing text size.
Em for fonts-size and percentage width (or no width) for structural
elements and you can't really go wrong.
From: Al Sparber
Date: Thu, Apr 11 2013 3:42PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
On 4/11/2013 5:34 PM, Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
> I think you're confusing them with Opera...
That is precisely what I did.
From: Alastair Campbell
Date: Mon, Apr 15 2013 2:41AM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
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Angela French wrote:
> I'm doing some accessibility testing on a new web app and Zooming works
> really well in used on site designed using responsive design techniques.
>
In general, a responsive design should work very well for someone who needs
to zoom in.
In testing with people who zoom in to roughly 200% (not using a magnifier)
they effectively used the mobile-sized version. NB: They didn't realise
that they had a different view, it just seemed to be big, clear and quite
linear!
The one caveat for now is that webkit has a bug [1] where media queries
don't trigger on zoom. However, that appears to be fixed [2], so should
filter through to Chrome & Safari soon.
Overall, I don't think pixel-sizing text is an accessibility issue any
more, unless you've still got a significant number of IE6 users.
The default make things bigger in desktop browsers is zoom, and in mobile
browsers you don't tend to get that much control. (E.g. setting text bigger
in the settings doesn't seem to affect Safari.)
In fact, given a responsive design, I'm not sure what problem text-only
sizing solves?
-Alastair
1] http://alastairc.ac/2012/01/zooming-bug-in-webkit/
2]
https://github.com/igrigorik/http-client-hints/issues/3#issuecomment-14632454
From: Steve Green
Date: Mon, Apr 15 2013 3:14AM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
Text-only sizing solves the problem of the 99.99% of websites that have not been built using responsive design.
Furthermore, almost every responsive design I have tested has failed to support 200% zoom. Depending on the screen resolution, no zooming at all may be possible without loss of some content on some of these sites. My experience has been that websites using responsive design have handled zooming worse than non-responsive designs. Also some have reduced functionality when in 'mobile' mode.
So until perfectly-built responsive designs become ubiquitous, we still need text-only zooming.
Steve Green
-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Alastair Campbell
Sent: 15 April 2013 09:41
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] IE doesn't increase font-size in px
Angela French wrote:
> I'm doing some accessibility testing on a new web app and Zooming
> works really well in used on site designed using responsive design techniques.
>
In general, a responsive design should work very well for someone who needs to zoom in.
In testing with people who zoom in to roughly 200% (not using a magnifier) they effectively used the mobile-sized version. NB: They didn't realise that they had a different view, it just seemed to be big, clear and quite linear!
The one caveat for now is that webkit has a bug [1] where media queries don't trigger on zoom. However, that appears to be fixed [2], so should filter through to Chrome & Safari soon.
Overall, I don't think pixel-sizing text is an accessibility issue any more, unless you've still got a significant number of IE6 users.
The default make things bigger in desktop browsers is zoom, and in mobile browsers you don't tend to get that much control. (E.g. setting text bigger in the settings doesn't seem to affect Safari.)
In fact, given a responsive design, I'm not sure what problem text-only sizing solves?
-Alastair
1] http://alastairc.ac/2012/01/zooming-bug-in-webkit/
2]
https://github.com/igrigorik/http-client-hints/issues/3#issuecomment-14632454
From: Alastair Campbell
Date: Mon, Apr 15 2013 3:36AM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
Steve Green wrote:
> Text-only sizing solves the problem of the 99.99% of websites that have
> not been built using responsive design.
>
I think there are quite a few more than 0.01%, it is becoming the norm for
new sites in the same way that CSS became the norm between 2001-2006.
Big-site examples recently are Microsoft.com and Sky.com.
However, we'll see how that pans out, I'm more interested in:
> Furthermore, almost every responsive design I have tested has failed to
> support 200% zoom. Depending on the screen resolution, no zooming at all
> may be possible without loss of some content on some of these sites.
I'm struggling to see how that would happen. A quick look at bostonglobe.com&
microsoft.com in IE at 1024 wide & 200%, they appeared to work fine. What
sort of issues are you seeing?
Cheers,
-Alastair
From: Joe Chidzik
Date: Mon, Apr 15 2013 3:57AM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
> > Furthermore, almost every responsive design I have tested has failed
> > to support 200% zoom. Depending on the screen resolution, no zooming
> > at all may be possible without loss of some content on some of these sites.
>
>
> I'm struggling to see how that would happen. A quick look at bostonglobe.com&
> microsoft.com in IE at 1024 wide & 200%, they appeared to work fine. What sort
> of issues are you seeing?
In my own reviews, I've only ever found one site that failed when zoomed to 200%. Whilst the content appeared visually fine, the site itself disabled the horizontal scrollbar on the page, so when zooming in, you were stuck with whatever content was onscreen with no (reliable) way of moving left or right.
Joe
From: Steve Green
Date: Mon, Apr 15 2013 4:11AM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
Given that responsive design has only been around for a year or so, I think that 0.01% is probably an over-estimate. It's easy to imagine that everyone works to the same standards as we all do but we are actually a tiny minority. The vast majority of websites are not standards-compliant, not accessible and not responsive. And this will not change any time soon because there are so many amateur website designers out there.
The issues that we typically see are where the content expands off the screen to the right but it is not possible to scroll far enough to see it. Obviously it is possible to design sites that don't do that, but these issues are increasingly common. It never happened in the pre-responsive days.
Steve Green
-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Alastair Campbell
Sent: 15 April 2013 10:36
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] IE doesn't increase font-size in px
Steve Green wrote:
> Text-only sizing solves the problem of the 99.99% of websites that
> have not been built using responsive design.
>
I think there are quite a few more than 0.01%, it is becoming the norm for new sites in the same way that CSS became the norm between 2001-2006.
Big-site examples recently are Microsoft.com and Sky.com.
However, we'll see how that pans out, I'm more interested in:
> Furthermore, almost every responsive design I have tested has failed
> to support 200% zoom. Depending on the screen resolution, no zooming
> at all may be possible without loss of some content on some of these sites.
I'm struggling to see how that would happen. A quick look at bostonglobe.com& microsoft.com in IE at 1024 wide & 200%, they appeared to work fine. What sort of issues are you seeing?
Cheers,
-Alastair
From: Alastair Campbell
Date: Mon, Apr 15 2013 5:04AM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
Steve Green wrote:
> The issues that we typically see are where the content expands off the
> screen to the right but it is not possible to scroll far enough to see it.
> Obviously it is possible to design sites that don't do that, but these
> issues are increasingly common. It never happened in the pre-responsive
> days.
Um, that's exactly what should *not* happen in responsive designs, even
ones that do not consider accessibility. Are you sure these are not
fixed-width designs?
Can you provide any examples? Apart from the caveat I noted above (current
webkit browsers) you shouldn't get horizontal scrolling, that's the point!
-Alastair
From: Steve Green
Date: Mon, Apr 15 2013 5:17AM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
Yes, they are responsive insofar as the layout changes to a single column at low screen widths, and the content and features may change too.
Unfortunately I cannot provide any examples at the moment because all these sites have been built by our clients and they would not be at all pleased if I publicised their problems.
Steve Green
-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Alastair Campbell
Sent: 15 April 2013 12:05
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] IE doesn't increase font-size in px
Steve Green wrote:
> The issues that we typically see are where the content expands off the
> screen to the right but it is not possible to scroll far enough to see it.
> Obviously it is possible to design sites that don't do that, but these
> issues are increasingly common. It never happened in the
> pre-responsive days.
Um, that's exactly what should *not* happen in responsive designs, even ones that do not consider accessibility. Are you sure these are not fixed-width designs?
Can you provide any examples? Apart from the caveat I noted above (current webkit browsers) you shouldn't get horizontal scrolling, that's the point!
-Alastair
From: Alastair Campbell
Date: Mon, Apr 15 2013 6:09AM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
Fair enough, but do you get the same issues on well known examples, e.g.
boston globe and microsoft?
Having tested a few (not just our own) successfully, I'd like to work out
if it's specific to some implementations or some user-agent setups.
-Alastair
From: Steve Green
Date: Mon, Apr 15 2013 6:51AM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
Both of those sites work fine so it is our clients' implementations that are buggy, as I expected.
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Alastair Campbell
Sent: 15 April 2013 13:09
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] IE doesn't increase font-size in px
Fair enough, but do you get the same issues on well known examples, e.g.
boston globe and microsoft?
Having tested a few (not just our own) successfully, I'd like to work out if it's specific to some implementations or some user-agent setups.
-Alastair
From: David Ashleydale
Date: Mon, Apr 15 2013 10:37AM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
← Previous message | Next message →
I just did a quick check for the most popular web sites in 2013 and then
tried to zoom the text (using View/Text Size) to "Largest" in IE 8 /
Windows 7. I'm using a screen resolution of 1920 by 1200. Here are my
results:
1. Google - Pass.
2. Facebook - Fail. Text did not get any bigger.
3. Yahoo - Fail. Text did not get any bigger.
4. YouTube - Fail. Text did not get any bigger.
5. Wikipedia - Pass.
6. MSN - Pass.
7. Amazon - Fail. Text did not get any bigger.
8. eBay - Fail. Text did not get any bigger.
9. Twitter - Fail. Text did not get any bigger.
10. Bing - Partial pass. The text gets bigger, but some of the
functionality causes the page to get wider than the screen. Also, not all
of the text on the page gets bigger.
When I used View/Zoom (everything) to 200%, these were my results:
1. Google - Fail. Horizontal scroll bar appeared.
2. Facebook - Fail. Horizontal scroll bar appeared.
3. Yahoo - Fail. Horizontal scroll bar appeared.
4. YouTube - Fail. Horizontal scroll bar appeared.
5. Wikipedia - Pass.
6. MSN - Fail. Horizontal scroll bar appeared.
7. Amazon - Fail. Horizontal scroll bar appeared.
8. eBay - Fail. Horizontal scroll bar appeared.
9. Twitter - Pass.
10. Bing - Fail. Horizontal scroll bar appeared.
This was an interesting exercise for me. I had thought that these sites
would allow the text to resize but that it would look all screwy. Instead,
almost 7 out o 10 of them didn't even allow me to only resize the text at
all!
David Ashleydale
On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 5:51 AM, Steve Green < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> wrote:
> Both of those sites work fine so it is our clients' implementations that
> are buggy, as I expected.
>
> Steve
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = [mailto:
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Alastair Campbell
> Sent: 15 April 2013 13:09
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] IE doesn't increase font-size in px
>
> Fair enough, but do you get the same issues on well known examples, e.g.
> boston globe and microsoft?
>
> Having tested a few (not just our own) successfully, I'd like to work out
> if it's specific to some implementations or some user-agent setups.
>
> -Alastair
> > > messages to = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> > > >
From: Detlev Fischer
Date: Mon, Apr 15 2013 11:11AM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
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Looking at WCAG 2.0, there's nothing that spells "fail" if a page needs horizontal scrolling after a page zoom of 200% - the success criterion only asks for text scaling "without loss of content or functionality". Having to scroll horizontally does not lead to a loss of content, it's just a maddening inconvenience.
A while back I had a look at 20 news portals, and only 6 sites had decent support of text-only resizing with minor problems:
http://www.bitvtest.eu/articles/article/lesen/resizing-news.html
Note that some of the sites included in the survey may have been updated since.
Regards,
Detlev
From: Alastair Campbell
Date: Mon, Apr 15 2013 11:30AM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
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David Ashleydale wrote:
> almost 7 out of 10 of them didn't even allow me to only resize the text
> at all!
Hi David,
There's another conclusion I could draw from that: If you need things to
be bigger, there's no point in using text-sizing in IE.
Given that:
- The default user controls are for zoom (across desktop
IE/FF/Safari/Chrome/Opera)
- In testing with people who need zoom, I've only found people that either
didn't know about zoom, or only knew about the standard interface mechanism.
I would be inclined to ignore text-only zoom.
I guess horizontal scrolling beats overlapping text?
-Alastair
From: Jared Smith
Date: Mon, Apr 15 2013 11:33AM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
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On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 11:11 AM, Detlev Fischer wrote:
> Looking at WCAG 2.0, there's nothing that spells "fail" if a page needs horizontal scrolling after a page zoom of 200%
Success Criteria 1.4.8 (Level AAA) does require that the page not have
horizontal scrolling when text is scaled to 200%.
Success Criteria 1.4.4 (Level AA) simply requires that text can be
resized to 200%. However, in the supporting documentation it clarifies
that if the page supports zoom to 200% (almost every web page does),
then you've met the requirements of the success criteria.
So if you're goal is merely Level AA conformance, you can pretty much
ignore text sizing requirements. However, we know that some users do
increase just their text sizes, so it's important for true
accessibility that their needs be met. But, such users rarely increase
the text size clear up to 200%. If a user requires 200%, they'll be
using page zoom, a screen enlarger, or something other than 200% text
sizing (for which the vast majority of the web fails miserably).
As such, our recommendations are to support page zoom to 200%
(congratulations, every page passes!) while trying to minimize
horizontal scrolling if reasonable (this is more difficult and usually
requires responsivity). We also recommend that the page maintain
readability and functionality (it doesn't have to look the same) at a
more reasonable text size increase - perhaps 150% at the most. One can
do so using fixed or relative font sizes. This approach seems to
adequately meet the needs of both audiences - those that zoom/enlarge
the page and those that increase text sizes.
Jared
From: Al Sparber
Date: Mon, Apr 15 2013 11:45AM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
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On 4/15/2013 1:30 PM, Alastair Campbell wrote:
> I guess horizontal scrolling beats overlapping text?
Interestingly, if a site is responsively designed, the zoom feature in
modern browsers will trigger the media queries and you will wind up
viewing your page on a 25 inch monitor as it would appear on an iPhone.
Try zooming our site in a modern browser. You should not see a
horizontal scrollbar.
--
Al Sparber - PVII
http://www.projectseven.com
The Finest Dreamweaver Menus | Galleries | Widgets
Since 1998
From: Detlev Fischer
Date: Mon, Apr 15 2013 11:57AM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
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Hi Jared,
Of course you're right about SC 1.4.8 - my oversight. - I meant to qualify 'on the conformance level AA' - which is the level commonly required in national directives (and the forthcoming EU mandate 376).
I absolutely concur with your recommendations. Text-only resizing to work up to 150% happens to be what the German variant implementation of WCAG, the BITV-Test, currently requires.
Detlev
On 15 Apr 2013, at 19:33, Jared Smith wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 11:11 AM, Detlev Fischer wrote:
>> Looking at WCAG 2.0, there's nothing that spells "fail" if a page needs horizontal scrolling after a page zoom of 200%
>
> Success Criteria 1.4.8 (Level AAA) does require that the page not have
> horizontal scrolling when text is scaled to 200%.
>
> Success Criteria 1.4.4 (Level AA) simply requires that text can be
> resized to 200%. However, in the supporting documentation it clarifies
> that if the page supports zoom to 200% (almost every web page does),
> then you've met the requirements of the success criteria.
>
> So if you're goal is merely Level AA conformance, you can pretty much
> ignore text sizing requirements. However, we know that some users do
> increase just their text sizes, so it's important for true
> accessibility that their needs be met. But, such users rarely increase
> the text size clear up to 200%. If a user requires 200%, they'll be
> using page zoom, a screen enlarger, or something other than 200% text
> sizing (for which the vast majority of the web fails miserably).
>
> As such, our recommendations are to support page zoom to 200%
> (congratulations, every page passes!) while trying to minimize
> horizontal scrolling if reasonable (this is more difficult and usually
> requires responsivity). We also recommend that the page maintain
> readability and functionality (it doesn't have to look the same) at a
> more reasonable text size increase - perhaps 150% at the most. One can
> do so using fixed or relative font sizes. This approach seems to
> adequately meet the needs of both audiences - those that zoom/enlarge
> the page and those that increase text sizes.
>
> Jared
> > > --
Detlev Fischer
testkreis - das Accessibility-Team von feld.wald.wiese
c/o feld.wald.wiese
Thedestraße 2
22767 Hamburg
Tel +49 (0)40 439 10 68-3
Mobil +49 (0)1577 170 73 84
Fax +49 (0)40 439 10 68-5
http://www.testkreis.de
Beratung, Tests und Schulungen für barrierefreie Websites
From: Jim Allan
Date: Mon, Apr 15 2013 12:53PM
Subject: Re: IE doesn't increase font-size in px
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On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 11:37 AM, David Ashleydale < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >wrote:
> I just did a quick check for the most popular web sites in 2013 and then
> tried to zoom the text (using View/Text Size) to "Largest" in IE 8 /
> Windows 7. I'm using a screen resolution of 1920 by 1200. Here are my
> results:
>
I went into IE Internet options | accessibility | and checked the Ignore
Font sizes box, and then set the View/Text Size to "Largest", screen
resolution of 1920 by 1080
1. Google - pass - though the text in search box stayed the same, the auto
complete text in the drop down got bigger
2. Facebook - partial pass. the blue zone at the top doesn't get any
bigger, and the "keep men logged in" and "forgot your password?" are half
gone. the rest is fine, line height problems in navigation areas (left and
right). Actual posts are ok, except lost all of the avatars.
3. Yahoo - partial pass. problem with line heights and zone (divs) heights
cutting off text.
4. YouTube - partial pass. problem with line heights and zone (divs)
heights cutting off some text.
5. Wikipedia - pass - but search box did not get any bigger
6. MSN - - fail. problem with line heights and zone (divs) heights
cutting off text. 12% right side of screen needs horizontal scrolling
7. Amazon - Fail - Search Box got bigger! problem with line heights and
zone (divs) heights cutting off text in navigation area...the rest seems
fine. 15% right side of screen needs horizontal scrolling
8. Ebay - partial pass - problem with line heights and zone (divs) heights
cutting off text.
9. Twitter - partial pass. line height issues - little space between line.
readable mostly
10. bing - Pass. search box got bigger but not the text inside.
Ignoring the font size does not ignore any of the other reading
characteristics. While the fonts get bigger, the text on wrapping lines
(paragraphs) tends to run together. However only 2 sites need horizontal
scrolling.
I becomes very easy to see which text is 'real' and which are part of
images (they don't change size.)
jim
> 1. Google - Pass.
> 2. Facebook - Fail. Text did not get any bigger.
> 3. Yahoo - Fail. Text did not get any bigger.
> 4. YouTube - Fail. Text did not get any bigger.
> 5. Wikipedia - Pass.
> 6. MSN - Pass.
> 7. Amazon - Fail. Text did not get any bigger.
> 8. eBay - Fail. Text did not get any bigger.
> 9. Twitter - Fail. Text did not get any bigger.
> 10. Bing - Partial pass. The text gets bigger, but some of the
> functionality causes the page to get wider than the screen. Also, not
> all
> of the text on the page gets bigger.
>
> When I used View/Zoom (everything) to 200%, these were my results:
>
> 1. Google - Fail. Horizontal scroll bar appeared.
> 2. Facebook - Fail. Horizontal scroll bar appeared.
> 3. Yahoo - Fail. Horizontal scroll bar appeared.
> 4. YouTube - Fail. Horizontal scroll bar appeared.
> 5. Wikipedia - Pass.
> 6. MSN - Fail. Horizontal scroll bar appeared.
> 7. Amazon - Fail. Horizontal scroll bar appeared.
> 8. eBay - Fail. Horizontal scroll bar appeared.
> 9. Twitter - Pass.
> 10. Bing - Fail. Horizontal scroll bar appeared.
>
> This was an interesting exercise for me. I had thought that these sites
> would allow the text to resize but that it would look all screwy. Instead,
> almost 7 out o 10 of them didn't even allow me to only resize the text at
> all!
>
> David Ashleydale
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 5:51 AM, Steve Green <
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> > wrote:
>
> > Both of those sites work fine so it is our clients' implementations that
> > are buggy, as I expected.
> >
> > Steve
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = [mailto:
> > = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Alastair Campbell
> > Sent: 15 April 2013 13:09
> > To: WebAIM Discussion List
> > Subject: Re: [WebAIM] IE doesn't increase font-size in px
> >
> > Fair enough, but do you get the same issues on well known examples, e.g.
> > boston globe and microsoft?
> >
> > Having tested a few (not just our own) successfully, I'd like to work out
> > if it's specific to some implementations or some user-agent setups.
> >
> > -Alastair
> > > > > > messages to = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> > > > > > > >
> > > >
--
Jim Allan, Accessibility Coordinator & Webmaster
Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired
1100 W. 45th St., Austin, Texas 78756
voice 512.206.9315 fax: 512.206.9264 http://www.tsbvi.edu/
"We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." McLuhan, 1964