Somewhere I read that the Elastic Design is dead because now all major browsers can make zoom on the page, so if someone (one of those users with vision problems that no one knows but we know they exist because statistics says that) find the font size small, she can adjust it without breaking the design. That claim can’t be more selfish.

I’m one of those users, and although pressing Ctrl++ is an easy task, also is annoying to have to do it on almost every web site. Cheers for the genius that thought that is a good idea developing web pages with a font size of 10 px (font-size: 62.5%; somebody?).

There must be an easy way! A way in which I can tell my browser what my preferred font size is (20, by the way) and then have it render every page using that size. Of course that exists! But fixed layouts are more easy to develop! So almost always my preference is overwriten. Damn it! Sure, I can force my browser to render all the pages with a font size not smaller than a specified one, but when I do that almost every layout gets broken.

I’ll tell you a freak story: A friend of mine, who also have a visual disability, loves to press Ctrl+- in every website that she visits. Why can’t she specify 8 as her preferred font size and let the pages renders in function of that? (That’s why this post is tagged as “usability” and not as “accessibility”).

What a shame! We are using electronic interfaces which are design and develop like if they were a piece of paper.

Corollary

Minorities go! Equal marriage now!