Text resize buttons - any opinions?
Hi All
I'm building a site that needs to be accessible to people with disabilities and older users in particular. I've read lots of things saying that instead of using text resize widgets, we should be directing our users to a page that explains how to change font size within the browser, and I've always thought that was a good approach.
But thinking about this project, I'm wondering: if you know that you're going to have lots of people wanting to resize text, and perhaps not knowing how to, shouldn't you give them the option of doing it either way?
Would be v interested in any thoughts on this!
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My main reasons for not wanting text-resize buttons:
- If your audience have drastically different needs due to a high incidence of visual disability, you should design your site to work well for them by default, instead of requiring a widget. There's also a good chance that they are already using ATs to meet these needs—which you need to determine through market research so that you can make sure your site plays well.
- If your audience often needs to resize text, there's a good chance they've figured it out by now. If not, showing them how to do it in future is much more valuable than resizing the text on just one site.
- If your audience don't often need to resize text except for on your site, that's an indication that your default text size is the root of the problem. Why add a widget to fix it instead of just fixing it for everyone, all the time?
- Text-resize widgets are often very badly implemented; they will resize body text, but not text in images or Flash. Implementing it correctly will usually take quite a while, for (I suspect) very little ROI. In contrast, modern browsers are already equipped with a zoom function to resize the whole page content, which is much more useful.
Generally, the time spent implementing a text-resize widget could be much better spent making sure that your site responds well to resizing the text/width and zooming!
Last edited by Jordan Gray on 17 Mar 2009 09:49 am; edited 1 time in total
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Thanks for a very speedy reply!
I agree. I was aiming to do all the other stuff by default (no px fonts, decent default font size etc) and also provide an accessibility page, but I guess I was asking: If you've got all this stuff, might it still be worth having the resize buttons? Might some people not be helped by them still?
I'm going towards not having them, but I'm curious to see what everyone thinks.
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For some previous threads on this:
- User Interface "Enchancements": If browsers already provide it, don't duplicate it.
- Need help on coding feature for "increase font size icon": Users struggle rather than learning their browser or OS settings. But the settings are more useful once configured and apply to all websites immediately. OS settings apply not just to all websites but to all e-mail, word processing, chat applications and so on.
- "text size widgets" on Accessify Forum via a Google Search.
Furthermore, widgets only apply to the sites which use them. Also, they must be configured on each site individually. It simply doesn't scale.
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Thanks for your thoughts. Yes I agree - it seems more responsible to show people how to use their own browser.
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