stevenclark.com.au

A recent conversation over on Roger’s 456 Berea Street has been discussing whether its better to scrap text resizing widgets and in their place provide the information which could educate users how to resize text manually. I’m a big fan of providing extra information, reminiscent of the now faux pas accessibility page heavily campaigned against not so long ago. In the big picture I’m a fan of these documents (even IF only one person ever reads them I’ve improved the world) - the more information out there for users the better they might be informed if they get interested.

My side comment here is simply a caution not to throw out the usability of skip links, text resizing widgets and whatever else that clutters designs simply on the expectation that users need to educate. Generally users aren’t us - back to my previous post on attribution - they are simply generic users. My mother-in-law is a user and so is my step-daughter! It is very easy to hang around geeks too long and assume we’re all on the same page but that will never ever be the case. Our job is to accomodate users (and usability) not to try to dictate the terms of the interaction with expectations they have time or care enough about the web to learn how to use their browser prior to experiencing our site.

Do you get what I’m driving at? There’s a tail wagging the horse in that premise.

I should qualify myself here about text resize widgets, by the way. I have never developed one even though to my eye they seem like style switchers (zoom layouts were good weren’t they?). I also don’t think putting them on the page simply to excuse terrifically shite tiny fonts is appropriate either. From experience if text is too small I usually just hit the road anyway and neither a widget nor a page to explain how to resize (I’m assuming even if I looked there the text would still be tiny) would rectify my pain. So I’m not defending widgets. And I generally don’t like them as an interaction in most circumstances. And in many ways I see the point (and not) of the conversation.

We do agree that building things right in the first place is key to creating high quality websites. And his article is a valid commentary even if I tend to disagree with the premise. Even if I only disagree in principle.

But I do think having supplementary links and giving some users more choice (such as styleswitchers) is a good idea in principle. The trick is in the seamless execution. The real trick is in not fitting your widget into your original bad assumption to make text too small in the first place.

My view: make text sizes adequate for the general user and maybe a bit bigger for those with some vision difficulty. Plus provide information for those who are interested. My mother in law would probably prefer the widget under these circumstances.

Update: 5 minutes later
I would have to add that nearly every single case of text resize widget I’ve ever seen was implemented badly though from a usability perspective (in my opinion). So I can really understand some of the point. On the other hand today making profiles on the Centrelink automated payment estimator tool for my internship research the print button was very convenient!

Update: many many minutes later
Grant Broome in Roger’s comments (number 34) makes a solid point when he says:

I work with people with learning difficulties and mobility impairments who find these widgits useful. This debate seems to be cropping up everywhere at the moment.

I can envision a number of cases where that would be an applicable context - learning difficulties and impairments - so I definately wouldn’t say they should never be used. How many first time users on the Web at any one time? Intellectually impaired? Could a decently sized (Fitts Law applicable) widget help in some sites - mostly my whine with these widgets is the tiny tininess of them? I think government need to think along these lines if they want to cover as much of society as possible in their accessibility, after all they of all people couldn’t expect all users to know how to resize text (or find the advice page) without some intervention of God! The Department of Education here is 20,000 pages for example.

Food for thought.