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Switch to alternative zoom layout for low vision users

  • Writing by Rajveer
  • On August 24th, 2008 at 8:11 am

Joe Clark has been explaining us about the significance of providing an alternative zoom layout design for low-vision users, which I believe is still not followed by many people since it is an important aspect of web accessibility. We must understand that not every user with visual impairments may use the additional tools for assistance. Considering this fact, we should provide them the flexibility to access the content as an additional feature with in the website itself, and providing a link to switch into zoom layout could be ideal to do that.

Zoom layout is an alternative CSS file to restructure the web page which turns into more comfortable layout for visually disabled users to read and access the content. We know that a user can increase the font-size using browser to read the content, but it leads to a big possibility that page could break. Also in multi-column layout, content from right hand side can go off the display. And moreover you might be using too many colors or low contrast layout to present the content. So the optional zoom layout does all that work for you.

There could be many things we could do for low-vision users while allowing the user to switch to zoom layout (also known as switch to high contrast layout). But it completely depends on how much deeper we want to go into. But mainly there are main three steps to follow.

  • Zoom layouts are meant to provide high contrast layout, so that it becomes easier to read and access the content further.
  • Multi-column layout turns into single column, so that nothing goes off the screen even while zooming more.
  • Off course small size fonts turns into big size, through out the page.

I have been working on zoom layout since it was in my to-do list since I started this blog. Finally it is functional, check the top most link which says Switch to zoom layout. I have been saying accessibility is not hard to learn, so this one too is just an additional step to dive into it. We can implement the zoom layout functionality using JavaScripting, Session, and cookie, I have done it using cookie considering it as the best option. Your comments are most welcome if I can improve the layout further.

4 Responses

  1. Kaly August 24th, 2008 at 8:40 am

    Appreciate your efforts to encourage people, you are right on this… people might know about accessibility or may be following also but even I haven’t seen many website with switch to high contrast facility.

    Let’s hope this reaches to a lot of people and I think your zoom layout theme looks great, certainly much improved version for low-vision users.

  2. Rajveer August 24th, 2008 at 8:42 am

    Thanks Kaly, you were just too quick to respond on this :-D

  3. Aroopam Bhuyan August 25th, 2008 at 10:22 pm

    No it is not bcoz you had sent another mail urging us to share ideas, but all bcoz this is something very new i have read about accessibility….as observed by kaly…i too havent seen any sites with zoom facility….thanks for sharing this knowledge….definitely would be a best practice in my next project (hope it comes soon :-) )

  4. Gopal Juneja September 2nd, 2008 at 2:56 am

    Your efforts for web accessibility is really great, reading your article on accesibility always inspire me to stick with accessibility.

    Appreciated………. Keep it up

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