Do I need to allow font adjustment for 508?

[lprintz]

Hi guys!

I’m redoing a website that caters to the elderly and currently has the ability to increase/decrease font size.

I’m wondering if I MUST have this to be 508 compliant or can I simply design with em’s?

My thought is, if a user is visually impaired they must have their browser settings adjusted making this functionality useless. I rarely see this on sites and, to be honest, is cheesey to me :)

Any thoughts?

Len

[Paulie_D]

if a user is visually impaired they must have their browser settings adjusted making this functionality useless.

That’s a fairly big assumption. There is no setting, HTML or CSS that will automagically detect that your site is legible to me.

I might have my browser set to 125% zoom as matter of course but if you are using a 2px font…it’s not going to make it automatically readable to me

If you want to be compliant…be compliant. It’s a choice.

[lprintz]

Yeah…I hear ya but, that being said, I believe being ‘compliant’ is to build the site with em vs px for fonts to adapt to the user’s settings.

I just wasn’t sure if having this functionality is needed…I’ve been to compliant sites that DIDN’T have that.

decisions, decisions…

[Author]

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