Well, I suppose this has been a long time in coming, but I have recently been in a circular debate on one of the forums I regular: attempting to reason with an inexperienced developer that embracing the need for compliance and accessibility within our design process actually frees us up to expand our web presence. The argument spawned from the simplistic inquiry about how to lock a font size down to the degree that users were not able to increase or decrease font size. My initial response was to gently chide the user in question by reminding him that we are dealing with an end user product with web design, and we need to create our product to give the user the most flexibility rather than forcing them to adhere to rigid guidelines defined by our lack of creativity. Upon receiving a very juvenile and My-way-or-the-highway-esque response, I decided to take a big step back and review the big picture behind the need for accessibility and compliance in web.

Looking at the overall structure of an (X)HTML/CSS layout, it is extremely easy to realize why an uneducated or inexperienced designer may express a desire to “lock” font sizes in place; however, the desire for absolute control of user experience this stems from will inextricably lead into other areas of design as well. While I will venture to admit that web design is a creative medium which allows for us to express ourselves and our thoughts, I must also acknowledge the fact that it is a consumer product, and as such, we must treat every decision we make in our design process and execution with the end user in mind. That being said, I would much rather get into the practice of finding out the limitations and boundaries my users will be under – such as browser or hardware limitations – and design with them in mind. Your product will be much more successful if it is produced with the lowest common denominator in mind.

Now, don’t jump to any conclusions here. I’m not recommending that we go back to mid 90′s site design practices; however, I do recommend that as you develop a site for today’s audience you keep in mind that you may very well have some users who are stuck in the 90′s technology-wise. What do I mean by this? Shall we forego using advanced positioning and CSS techniques within our pages? Do we avoid certain dynamic elements and visual features to keep from ostracizing those few users we may attract who are stuck in the stone age? Not at all! Rather, we take another step beyond simply learning the base methods of the new technologies and we learn to adapt them to all our users. For instance, with this issue of fixed font-size, there are several things I know: first, IE cannot resize text if I define it as pixels rather than ems in my style sheet. Next, I know that my navigation may not display as expected, or – perish the thought – actually break my design. In addition to these things, I realize that I may very well have guests who are physically disabled visually who have a need to resize the text on my page in order to fully experience my site.

Bringing in the possibilty of special needs causing issues with my desire for absolute control brings us beyond the realm of simple design liberty and into the area of Web Accessibility. There are actual government regulations, such as Section 508 that are in place to help govern sites that may especially cater to people with physical needs, such as educational institutions. This is exactly the reason that the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) was formed. These guidelines are great examples of things we should keep in mind for all our designs, too. Now, to counteract the issues mentioned above, the novice designer would revert to using pixels in all style declarations in order to limit the majority of his users. In addition, in some instances, he may even generate images or flash objects to serve some of his text to the screen in a format over which he does, for the most part, have ultimate control. The problem here, though, is that he severely limits the flexibility of his site.

On the other hand, an experienced user may learn further how background image gradients can work together with background color on navigation and other elements within a design to allow the possibility of those elements expanding beyond their intended boundaries without breaking the layout of the page. While this may cause the page to not display in its ideal format, it shows that the designer at least took the time and effort to consider accessibility while still adhering to standards compliance at the same time. The ideal is to design pages to be as flexible as possible and allow the user to control his experience as much as possible while still keeping yourself well within the bounds of accessibility goals and standards compliance. This is by no means an easy task, and as with everything in web, there are no rigid rules or boundaries cut and dry as to when you cross the line from acceptably hoarding control in one element at the cost of some accessibility. And, as always, the decision is entirely up to the creative mind behind the design, but these things should always be considered. If you choose to ignore accessibility principles or compliance issues within a page, be sure that you have good reason for doing so and leave them out intentionally, not due to ignorance.