Larger Text

[John Jupp]

How many millions of potential customers find it difficult to read the long description of a product because the print is small?

Have you tried to make the print a touch larger for people with visual impediments?

[accelerator]

I normally use % or ems for my text size in the CSS so they can make the text larger if they want.

Rgds

Accelerator

[shyguy0507]

Another solution is to use the relative words in css like small, smaller etc

[axod]

Problem is if you use %, em, small, etc, then IE renders it as retardedly large, while firefox renders it as sane sized. The only way I've found to get them to both render them the same size is to specify pixel sizes.
You can still enlarge/reduce the font size in firefox when specified in pixels, not sure about IE, but I'd expect you can.

[Donk]

I try to comply with accessibility standards as much as possible, using CSS, relative sizes, h1 etc tags and alt descriptions. I also design in XHTML.

There are however occasions where the design would fail miserably with relative sizes.

Visually impaired viewers can disable the styles and font sizes in Firefox and also IE from at least IE 6 in the tools option of their browsers. Screen magnifiers are also available for use with Windows XP and presumably other operating systems

When I use my own Javascript I always use a noscript option for text browsers and users with Javascript disabled, although I have to admit that the noscript option I provide is sometimes not as good as the script option but at least the user gets something rather than nothing.

[stu foster]

Originally Posted by axod Problem is if you use %, em, small, etc, then IE renders it as retardedly large, while firefox renders it as sane sized. The only way I've found to get them to both render them the same size is to specify pixel sizes. You can still enlarge/reduce the font size in firefox when specified in pixels, not sure about IE, but I'd expect you can.

If you set your body tag to font-size 62.5%, you can then use ems in the same way as point sizes. These will render the same size in all browsers

Stu

[plussize.co.uk]

I researched before designing my sites.
I found that 10% of short-sighted web users don't wear glasses that should.
I also found that bold, Arial/Verdana size 10 or 12 is very friendly towards dyslexics - 14% of the population, but it's reckoned only half of those will ever go online.
( Ideal website set-up for Dyslexics is Arial, size 14, double-spacing and pale yellow background with black lettering. )
I believe that I design very simple sites, that instantly appeal to web-newbies as well as the visually impaired, while not being so in-your-face as to be really turn-offs.

my first site, www.OutsizeClothes.com looks amateur, but appeals to newbies and visually impaired, and has click-thru rates of between 6% and 14%

[DioBach]

Originally Posted by John Jupp How many millions of potential customers find it difficult to read the long description of a product because the print is small? Have you tried to make the print a touch larger for people with visual impediments?

I don't know about visually impaired people, my sights fine, but there's nothing that winds me up more than tiny text. With the big resolutions on screens these days, it's impossible ot read loads of sites without putting your nose next to the monitor. One of the big tenets of web 2.0 is font size, but too many sites still get it wrong.

[moredial]

Originally Posted by stu foster If you set your body tag to font-size 62.5%, you can then use ems in the same way as point sizes. These will render the same size in all browsers Stu

I have seen sites where some fool decided to set the body size to 62.5% - there were these little trails showing where text should have been. Any text less than 1em was just a joke. As for setting text at 10px - do you have any idea how many rows of text at 10px you can get on a high resolution screen? Magnifying glass anyone?

Rather than assuming that everyone is incapable of setting the default font size in their browser so you have to set the font size as something that looks OK in your screen resolution and default font size, if font size is that important to you add a script to your site which gives users the option to resize the text to their preferred size - or add a page which educates them in how to set the default font size so that the size they see is correct for their screen size and resolution.

Life would become simpler if IE ever got around to discovering that there are 72 pts to the inch. That way, web designers could use pt for font size, knowing that everyone regardless of their screen size and resolution would see 12 pt as 1/6 inch. Instead, IE displays 9 pt at about 1/6 inch - or 25% bigger than expected.

If you force users into a font size, as soon as they set their own minimum font sizes the layout falls apart.

The only solution is to keep the layout simple and use as much fluidity as possible in the design. If you use 1em as the font size for the majority of the content and test your layout everywhere between 9px and 24px and still have it looking good, then you know that your site is going to work for the majority of users.

I usually find that the browser default font is too big for my screen resolution, so I default at between 12 - 14 px for my various browsers. That works fine until someone comes along and decides that everything on their site will be in font size=2. With small now appearing as font size=1, reading just becomes impossible - and it is usually the menus or links which are set in the smaller font size. Then I have to go into my browser preferences to set a minimum size of 9px just so that I have a chance to read what they want me to read? - more likely I will be off to explore someone else's site.

plussize.co.uk mentions outsizeclothes.com. Sorry to say this, but your font is about as small as I can go and still be able to read it. It looks half the size that I see on this forum. When I view the home page, I can see about 2 inches below the 'contact us' link on the left and over half of the cartoon - what do you see before the fold? The result of using font size=2 for the content without taking into account how the visitor has set up their computer.

I could go on. Just do a search for 'morons in web space' and have a good read from a fellow Aussie.