On 2009/07/05 11:21 (GMT+0100) Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis composed:
Felix Miata wrote:
On 2009/07/04 10:13 (GMT+0100) Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis composed:
Felix Miata wrote:
Zoom, minimum text size and magnifiers are defense mechanisms. The
basic problem is the pervasive offense - not respecting users'
font size choices by incorporating them at 100% for the bulk of
content. Thus, an even better way to address presbyopia is to design
to make defenses unnecessary in the first place.
I'm dubious about the rhetoric here:
That you call it rhetoric doesn't make it so.
Too small text is #1 user complaint:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html
That's not quite what the article says. Bad fonts was the biggest
complaint from Nielsen's readers, but that category includes frozen
font sizes and low contrast, not just small font sizes.
The entire text:
Bad fonts won the vote by a landslide, getting almost twice as many votes as
the #2 mistake. About two-thirds of the voters complained about small font
sizes or frozen font sizes; about one-third complained about low contrast
between text and background.
To suppose Frozen means anything other than frozen undersize would be a
difficult supposition to support, as one need only peruse the web to see how
rare frozen at or larger than default can be found. Thus, disrespectful
(smaller than default) font sizes were and _are_ the #1 (foundational)
problem, with other font issues lagging.
W3 recommends 100%: http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size
Recommends has a technical sense when it comes to W3C, and this isn't
a formal recommendation:
While the tips are carefully reviewed by the participants of the
[Quality Assurance Interest] group, they should not be seen as anything
else than informative bits of wisdom, and especially, they are not
normative W3C technical specifications.
Keyword: W I S D O M
Designers who implement that wise advice are wise.
As do others, e.g.:
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/article/web-fonts/
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/fontsize.html
http://informationarchitects.jp/100e2r/?v=4
http://fm.no-ip.com/auth/bigdefaults.html
http://www.cameratim.com/personal/soapbox/morons-in-webspace#hard-to-read-fonts
The claims I was trying to question were:
Claim 1: Browser defaults always represent user choice.
Actual choice, of course not always. Safest presumption of choice, very much
yes. Any other presumption, which is what use of non-defaults makes, is a
poor foundation on which to build in usability and/or accessibility.
This claim 1 is addressed by the major point of Inkster article.
Claim 2: Acceptance of publisher font size suggestions is not a valid
user choice.
If by publisher you mean browser and/or desktop environment vendor(s), it's
a logical presumption to make, and a superior one to presuming that
disrespecting defaults (non-100%) can improve the experience for more than
degrade the experience.
If by publisher you mean site designer, I'm not sure I understand your
claim. If you assume an actual user setting is not a valid choice, whether
made or not, actively or otherwise, you still have no basis to determine your
disregard of or necessarily arbitrary adjustment to those settings can be
better for the users than whatever was set by or for the users. IOW, there's
no practical and legitimate way for any designer to logically come up with
something different that is globally better.
Claim 3: Publisher font size suggestions are an offence against user
choice in some way that typeface and color suggestions are not.
Trouble with the size, the foundation of legibility, usually overwhelms the
impact of typeface and color, which is not the same thing as saying the
latter have no impact at all.
Generally the designer can reduce legibility by changing face/color, but not
globally improve materially WRT legibility of the defaults. All the browsers
by default use reasonably legible typefaces, and black on white. Black on
white is presumptively best, like most quality books and most magazine pages
use. A reduced contrast can help only for a subset of the universe, mostly
those who have displays set to excessive brightness and/or contrast. Those
with such displays should correct for themselves. OTOH, there are those who
must use tired old displays, often with brightness and contrast _incapable_
of being restored upwards to near optimal.
Most of the authorities you cite agree with Claim 1 but none offer any
argument for Claims 1 or 2.
As to 1, what's to argue? As to 2, maybe they wouldn't understand your point
either?
Most contradict Claim 3. In Nielsen's survey of his readers, a third
complained about poor color contrast. Oliver Reichenstein discusses how
bad contrast can reduce legibility, and your own article says to be
legible, text needs enough contrast. Toby Inkster and Stephen Poley
both discuss how typeface choice can render text
