On Sat, 2005-08-20 at 13:34 +0100, designer wrote: > Good afternoon (or whatever), > > Does the web accessibility toolbar let me off the hook as far as using > pixels for text sizing in IE is concerned? I have recently got the > excellent WAT from > > http://www.nils.org.au/ais/ > > and it has an excellent zoom facility, like opera. (A great, and very > educational tool anyway). > > I ask the question partly tongue-in-cheek, but it does make me wonder if > tools such as this should be the butt of responsibility? > > I just wondered, as it does seem to put the pixel argument into a > different perspective. > > No rants please: this is intended as an intelligent question, expecting > and wanting the same type of response.
Seeing as you've indicated you don't desire rants, I'll simply suggest that the assumption the burden of ensuring accessibility falls upon client-side (third part) utilities is akin to assuming all your potential viewers have Firefox or Opera. To extend this one step further, the need for any internal website search is negated, as, clearly, we may safely assume all users have installed the Google toolbar (obviously!) and are capable of typing "site:yoursite.com query" into the field. I'm pretty sure you know what the answer to your question should be, seeing as there's no way you can assume that the responsibility falls on the user -- given the rate of adoption of alternative web browsers as a precedent. At any rate, all this tool does is render "pixel" sized text even more irrelevant, as, clearly, it's not being respected anyway. You can actually improve your control over appearance through using relative font sizes and appropriate design practises to match this, rather than trying to force your users/visitors into one particular framework which then breaks as they attempt to escape it. Kind Regards, Joshua Street base10solutions Website: http://www.base10solutions.com.au/ Phone: (02) 9898-0060 Fax: (02) 8572-6021 Mobile: 0425 808 469 Multimedia Development Agency ________________________________________________________________________ E-mails and any attachments sent from base10solutions are to be regarded as confidential. Please do not distribute or publish any of the contents of this e-mail without the sender’s consent. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by replying to the e-mail, and then delete the message without making copies or using it in any way. Although base10solutions takes precautions to ensure that e-mail sent from our accounts are free of viruses, we encourage recipients to undertake their own virus scan on each e-mail before opening, as base10solutions accepts no responsibility for loss or damage caused by the contents of this e-mail. ________________________________________________________________________ ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
