I’ve always been amazed when I am using ultra-zoom photo cameras and how they enable me to see all the amazing details that are otherwise impossible to see. Or if you have sometimes looked under the microscope and discover a whole new universe.
When it comes to accessibility – zooming in – is one of the most valuable tools that can improve usability of digital products.
Just to show some practical examples of zooming I can benefit from:
- showing my SMS parcel information to the post clerk – I like to zoom in to the maximum on my mobile, so that they do not need to touch the phone at all in these Corona times,
- sometimes I like to read news on the TV, from sofa, and then I zoom in the browser to really get a readable version,
- cooking, reading some recipes on my mobile phone that is laying beside me, as I need both hands for cooking,
- when presenting some webpage content at work, on a big screen, it does help to zoom in, especially if page has a static typography or is maybe limited in width,
- when showing something on my phone to my parents, so that they can see without using reading glasses,…
I could go on and on, but the main point here is that digital products should really work well when we zoom in on them.
All digital products should really work well when we zoom in on them.
me, trying to emphasis the functionality of zoom
Zoom is a good example of why accessibility is useful for all
Like stated in my examples above – zooming in must work well – and this is not just a feature for users with sight problems, but it is really a benefit for us all. We are not getting any younger, right.
With age we do not only get wiser but some of our body functions begin to worsen. And sight is unfortunately one of them. There are studies about it out there (opens in new window), and I can testify for myself that I am indeed feeling that my sight is less good that it was 10 years ago.
Here are some examples of age-related vision challenges;
- as we age we need more light to see as well as before,
- reading and doing close work is more difficult as well – because the lens in our eyes are less flexible over time,
- we can experience problems with additional glare too – this is due to changes in our eye lenses too,
- after age of 40 it is unfortunately very common to get lower focus abilities for near vision due to so called presbyopia condition (opens in new window).
So design and typography should be zoom-friendly, not just responsive
Responsive design is now almost a standard and that is a good thing. Thinking about mobile first in the design phase solves a lot of problems for the desktop too and zooming in is one of the most important in my opinion.
But we must not forget that typography and fonts need to scale too.
It can be a problem when developers get their design defined with points or pixels for the fonts and therefore somehow static when it should be thought as dynamic in the beginning.
There are multiple theories and practices behind dynamic typography and I will dedicate it a few posts too, but let me conclude with saying that zooming in is one of the most viable accessibility tools we have and that all digital products should work well also when users zoom in on them. It is not strange that WCAG guidelines made it clear that:
– when zooming in to 400% there should only be scrolling in one direction (Success Criterion 1.4.10: Reflow, opens in new window),
– when zooming in to 200% all text can be read (Success Criterion 1.4.4: Resize text, opens in new window).
