Rick Lecoat wrote:
This bring into question the advice of the W3C tips page <http://
www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size#goodcss> where it states: "1em (or 100%)
is equivalent to setting the font size to the user's preference".
The above statement makes the implicit assumption that 'Browser
Default' equals 'User's Preference', an assumption that I can't help
but question.
Me too. However, any assumption made by a designer that 100% does *not*
equals 'User Preference', is just as questionable.
The majority of 'Accessibility users' (for want of a better term)
will, by contrast -- assuming that they use browsers at all -- have
their default settings tuned to their preferences, and will be
reasonably aware of how such settings are altered. Many will have a
large minimum font size specified, and/or be using IE's facility to
ignore any font size settings specified by the page.
Probably true. How many who know how to, and actively use, such browser
options, is unknown.
We do however know that the number of users who need to know and
actively use such browser options, is growing with the number of elderly
people on the web.
This need is to a large degree caused by the general use of small text,
which is based on designers' assumption that default size is too large.
What we get is a "perfect" circle of compensations for imposed
compensations, and the only somewhat reliable middle-ground is found at,
or close to, 'font-size: 100%'.
Accessibility is generally not improved by *not* declaring font-size
anywhere, but by averaging it for the users we want to reach and letting
size depend on readability and importance. Headlines should for instance
be larger than paragraph-text in most cases, but _much larger_ doesn't
necessarily help anyone.
If the designer has assumed that people who like smaller type sizes
will adjust their browser settings accordingly, he or she will
probably be disappointed much of the time.
Nevertheless, it is undeniably true that some people (myself
included) feel that 16px text is /slightly/ too large from a 'design
aesthetic' viewpoint [3].
My experience is that the average designer don't really _read_ stuff in
his/hers own creations, so "design aesthetic" viewpoints don't mean much
(to me) when it comes to what font-size to use.
This being the case, clearly /someone/ is going to be doing some
resizing of text when they visit your page -- whether it is the
person with perfect vision scaling things downward, or the person
with accessibility issues scaling things up.
The most used rescaling seems to be "permanent change of screen
resolution to suit the smallest text each user wants to read".
This means everything, on every web site, gets scaled to suit the user's
preferences on his/her screen(s). This in turn affects how much real
estate is available to designers, as browser-windows can't be larger
than the actual screen and we know that few users like to scroll
horizontally.
Again: what we get is a "perfect" circle of compensations for imposed
compensations...
If I used that "rescaling" method, web sites would be left with around
600px window-width to display their stuff on on my screens. Since I
don't, I can offer sites 3800px window-width if needed. My set-up and
use of options are not representative though.
Would a Bottom Up approach not have more chance of giving everybody
what they want to see?
Since that's what end-users has become used to by now because of all the
"compensations" that have flooded the web over the last 15 years or so,
you're probably (more or less) right.
It is not an ideal solution though, but I can't think of a "one size
fits all" solution other than that I personally tend to "size" close to
"average" = 100% = defaults when I have a say on the issue (as you have
probably already noticed over at [css-d] :-) ).
regards
Georg
--
http://www.gunlaug.no
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