southplatte
11-08-2003, 01:47 AM
Hello all,
I have recently been working on a site design, and unfortunately cannot link to it as it contains proprietary information that has not been released, that has been commissioned to be accessible by a certain group of their target market.
The group falls into the baby boomer age range and has lower quality vision (glasses, frequently bifocals).
I originally set the font to 12pt Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif using CSS. The client then requested that the font be enlarged, so I went to 14pt in the same family.
After further review, the client has requested that the site be set to 16pt fonts on all body text.
My response, as a developer, was that if the group they are discussing is less than 50% of their target market, the larger fonts for all users of the site may detract from it. However, if the group is a majority of their users, it may very well be the idea to enlarge the font.
Also, I am not sure what resolution my client is using to view the page in, but standard design conventions that I follow are to design to 800 x 600 and have no horizontal scrolling. The text at 14pt on this resolution is quite large. At 16pt the site becomes unreadable to standard audiences. I suggested that they try viewing the site at the 800 x 600 resolution to verify the text size, as most computer users with vision problems will run 800 x 600 or even 640 x 480 to enalrge the content on the screen. Am I wrong in that area?
As an end question, what are the typical font settings for accessible web sites? Is there a general size and font family that should be used?
I know I could dynamically change the font size using CSS per the visitors preferences, however, I am not sure that the client wants the users to need to change the site for their needs.
Any insight or help is greatly appreciated,
I have recently been working on a site design, and unfortunately cannot link to it as it contains proprietary information that has not been released, that has been commissioned to be accessible by a certain group of their target market.
The group falls into the baby boomer age range and has lower quality vision (glasses, frequently bifocals).
I originally set the font to 12pt Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif using CSS. The client then requested that the font be enlarged, so I went to 14pt in the same family.
After further review, the client has requested that the site be set to 16pt fonts on all body text.
My response, as a developer, was that if the group they are discussing is less than 50% of their target market, the larger fonts for all users of the site may detract from it. However, if the group is a majority of their users, it may very well be the idea to enlarge the font.
Also, I am not sure what resolution my client is using to view the page in, but standard design conventions that I follow are to design to 800 x 600 and have no horizontal scrolling. The text at 14pt on this resolution is quite large. At 16pt the site becomes unreadable to standard audiences. I suggested that they try viewing the site at the 800 x 600 resolution to verify the text size, as most computer users with vision problems will run 800 x 600 or even 640 x 480 to enalrge the content on the screen. Am I wrong in that area?
As an end question, what are the typical font settings for accessible web sites? Is there a general size and font family that should be used?
I know I could dynamically change the font size using CSS per the visitors preferences, however, I am not sure that the client wants the users to need to change the site for their needs.
Any insight or help is greatly appreciated,