Web accessibility is the making of websites in a way whereby by people of all abilities and disabilities can use it.
These days operating systems come with features such as Narrators & Magnifiers in the latest Windows systems.
Increasing the text on a website can put the design layout out of proportion. For this reason some web designers may control the text size that disables text enlarging controls.
The problem is that when the text is enlarged images are not.
At Everoak Web Design we want everyone to be able to read our websites.
Areas where we may use controlled text sizes would be in navigation menus, certain tables, photo captions and of course if our client specifically requests that we use text controls.
An example of why a certain web page element would need text size control would be a photo caption when expanding the text would mean that text is wider in size than the photo. The only solution to avoid distorting a web page by enlarging text would be a web page that is text only.
This website features text controls in the top heading that will increase the text size by 20% and 40%. The only downside of this is the controls will need to be used on each page.
Most most browsers have systems for enlarging text and zooming the web page which keeps proportions. There is a downside however to the latter as images may be stretched beyond their maximum pixels limit and will not appear clearly.
To zoom your web pages quickly using keyboard shortcuts
- Zoom In: Hold CTRL and toggle +
- Zoom Out: Hold CTRL and toggle -
- Reset Zoom: Hold CTRL and press 0 on the number pad
Tested in Internet Explorer 8, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari & Opera.
