I’m collecting data about Web users who use page zoom and/or change their browser font size, to help make better accessibility decisions at work. Please fill out this survey and boost!
@Odonian Ooh yeah. There’s a lot I wanted to ask but I also wanted to keep it short so more people would respond. Maybe we’ll do a follow-up with more questions.
re: survey on zoom features in browsers Show more
@malte Interesting. That’s one of the things I’m most interested in, because there’s a lot of debate over how to respond to text zoom/custom font sizes on web pages.
re: survey on zoom features in browsers Show more
@malte The thing is, web developers have the ability to make sites respond like that when you set the font size in your browser. It’s just most choose not to.
@VamptVo Yeah, configuring default font sizes in browsers is rather pointless. Also I don't understand why browsers don't come with beautiful CSS by default. Why does bare HTML has to look like 1991?
@malte That’s a good question. I think the W3C mandates certain default styles, but also the barebones defaults are good because they don’t get in developers’ way when they need to do fancier stuff.
@VamptVo How would they get in the way, though?
No website I know looks like bare HTML which means every default is overwritten anyway, no?
@malte Just that the more opinionated the defaults are, the more things devs have to override to get their preferred style. Also the defaults will always look bad to people BECAUSE they’re the defaults, so it’s a moving target.
@VamptVo in addition to zooming in, I also use a Font Swap extension for Chrome for readability improvements. Some sites have terrible fonts including "grey on grey" instead of white or black text on a contrasting background. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/font-swap-for-google-font/onhgmcpflfncjkdbclmhnfondmindgbg
@VamptVo I use Chrome and Firefox about equally (office versus home), but the survey only gives the option to pick one.
@bstacey My bad! You can pick “Other” and type that in the text box.
@VamptVo Really cool that you're doing this! Love it! If you do a follow-up, you may want to ask about Reader Mode. Personally, I don't use zooming (outside of pinch-to-zoom) all that much, but I make heavy use of Reader Mode in all my browsers, which I may or may not increase font size on.
@68kHeart Thanks! Reader Mode is less relevant for our Web usability purposes since we can’t do much to affect how it looks (which is a GOOD thing for users IMHO, considering how many sites refuse to give users control over styling).
I would, however, be interested in data from FF or Safari on Reader usage.
@VamptVo I answered the survey even if it's against my war against google.
Please, next time consider using a service which respects human rights.
Thanks for making this kind of surveys, they are really important.
But change that please. It's better for everyone.
@ekaitz_zarraga I feel ya. What are alternative survey tools you like?
@VamptVo I don't know any (I'm not interested in other people's opinion maybe? haha)... but If I find one I'll ping you.
I'm sure you can find some here in mastodon. People is wise here and they know a lot of alternatives to everything.
Just ask!
@VamptVo I just answered a survey from here:
https://www.surveymonkey.com
It might be a cool alternative.
@VamptVo I'm not sure, but maybe it would be helpful to have survey takers report the resolution of their monitor? I have a 2k monitor and the text looks much smaller on there compared to lower res monitors which is the main reason why I use browser zoom.