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I’m a huge fan of allowing people to make their font size bigger on the page… the new […]

I’m a huge fan of allowing people to make their font size bigger on the page… the new EH was recoded using “em” in hopes of allowing people to do that (next step, designing and implementing the widget for it).
I’ve just come across the Sac Bee’s solution.
The Sacramento Bee — sacbee.com — Low fare guide
It would be great except hte tools are sooo teensy someone visually challenged probably wouldn’t even notice them, much less use them.

8 Comments

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  1. 1
    Peter

    Even worse, even though it looks cool, not only will it be hard to use for people with visual problems, but it OVERRIDES their user settings, which is completely evil. So if I have bad eyesight and have my default font size set to extra large, it won’t work.

    An especially clear example of misunderstood accessibility.

  2. 2
    Peter

    A tip for testing: if you have win and one of those mouses with a scolling wheel, click ctrl and scroll the wheel, your browser font size should adjust. If the text doesn’t change size it’s fixed (= bad).

  3. 3
    MadMan

    I can’t read much on the site, Christina. The body text is barely visible and the “post a comment” links are just a microscopic grey blur. I’m using IE6 default size of “smaller”, like most people would be.

  6. 6
    MadMan

    Oops, you’re right, Mick. I’ve had my default set to “Smaller” for years.

    But that brings up an interesting issue. “Medium” is 12px text. But if you’re using “em”, making it “Smaller” doesn’t make the text 10px, it makes it 8px! This is too small for comfortable reading, and not the way I’d expect a browser to behave. The “posted” style with “0.9em” is just a blurry mass at “smaller” size.

  7. 7
    anha

    I somehow feel that this, as a principal, should be done by the user agent. Opera lets me zoom in and out as I wish. There is no need for every single site on the Internet to provide the same functionality.

  8. 8
    anha

    I somehow feel that this, as a principle, should be done by the user agent. Opera lets me zoom in and out as I wish. There is no need for every single site on the Internet to provide the same functionality.

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