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WCAG 2.0 says:

(1.4.4) Resize text: Except for captions and images of text, text can be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality. (Level AA)

And elaborates with:

The scaling of content is primarily a user agent responsibility.

and:

The author's responsibility is to create Web content that does not prevent the user agent from scaling the content effectively.

Internet Explorer's 'Text Size' option does not resize text coded with a pixel based font size. Therfore, to conform with the accessibility guidelines, we authours have traditionally avoided using pixel based font-sizes in CSS, opting for the more difficult em based font-sizes instead.

But since version 7, Internet Explorer has provided an alternative method to increase text size - the 'Zoom' option - which works with pixel-based font sizes.

Am I legally obliged to continue to support IE's Text Size feature when there is an alternative 'Zoom' feature in the browser settings?

WCAG 2 goes on to say:

If the author is using a technology whose user agents do not provide zoom support, the author is responsible to provide this type of functionality directly or to provide content that works with the type of functionality provided by the user agent.

Based in user stats, I no longer support IE6. Does this have any bearing on the answer? I no longer support IE 3 or Netscape 1 either for that matter, but these browsers seem less of an issue.

Thanks for the responses. Everything you say I agree with but i think the crux of my question has been lost so let be add some context.

I work on a large corporate site which has been around for more than a decade, has tens of thousands of pages, hundreds of CSS files of varying sizes (yes, we know) and font sizes set in pixels (again we know)

Pixel fonts mean the 'Text Size' browser setting in IE (even IE10) will not resize the text. As Robooneus rightly says ems will inherit the browser font size setting and are the better option, but pixels will not.

As a result, any user who needs bigger text in order to access our services, who is using any version of IE, will not be able to increase the font size using the 'text size' setting, but will be able to zoom the page if they have IE7 or above.

Am I legally obliged to continue to support IE's Text Size feature when there is an alternative 'Zoom' feature in the browser settings? For example, a user may be restricted to using an old browser such as IE6, or may not want to zoom the page beyond the size of the screen.

Ry-
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Steven Tew
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    Never realized this was an issue with i.e., but I hold issue with your assertion that ems are "more difficult". They offer a lot more flexibility than pixel-based font sizes -- specifically because they take into account a user's settings (browser font size) and you can set a general em-based font size for the site and set all other font sizes in relation to it for the site. For the most part, they are considered good practice for this reason -- nothing to do with IE6. – robooneus Jul 26 '13 at 09:43
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    What robooneus said. Nobody cares about IE6, so why should supporting it or not be an issue? Also, I'm not sure what you were going to use instead of ems. – Mr Lister Jul 26 '13 at 10:08
  • Thanks, I've added context to my original question to clarify. – Steven Tew Jul 27 '13 at 12:11
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    Still I don't think your choice on how to change things should not be based on what browsers you want to support. Base it on what your users want. And users don't want to have to change the zoom factor just to read your site. – Mr Lister Jul 27 '13 at 17:10

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Will expand the comment a bit as an answer so we can maybe get some discussion on it for the question:

No, you probably shouldn't worry about using ems just to satisfy IE6. There is basically no reason to support this browser anymore unless you are building something targeted at a very specific user set. For example: business clients that require employees to use only IE6 on company computers.

At its latest, IE6 isn't even at half of a percent

However, you should be using ems anyway. They are more flexible and just make more sense. Chris Coyier explains it way better than I can here, so read on to find out: Why Ems? (CSS-Tricks)

EDIT:

In response to the edits/clarification that you have made, it seems like a question eithernot suited to stackoverflow (i.e. more legal than technical), or something which we don't quite have enough information to answer (likely both).

In terms of whether or not you are legally obliged to do so, that is likely something that requires even more context. I speak from a non-expert standpoint, but I would say that, at least in the US, you are (probably) not legally obliged to support a specific browser as a private business. If you are a government entity, that gets a little more complicated. If the company is based on (or perhaps even conducts a large amount of business in) another country, I can't really say much. It is probable that, in a majority of the EU countries (I can only really speak with any knowledge about Germany), the same would hold true.

If we assume the site is for a government entity or is heavily funded by the government (having said that for private entities you should not legally be obliged), the next question would be about what sort of service the company provides via the website. If it is something that you are legally obliged to allow all citizens easy access to, then you might need to worry. But, even then, I doubt there is really any issue as the service would also then be required to be accessible through a non-internet channel.

I am guessing that the question is more something like "For the website of a (large) private business, am I subject to claims of discrimination if I do not include this feature?" Or am I still missing the context? I would say that the answer is, pretty definitely, no. But I don't actually have a legally informed answer.

I hope anyone with more knowledge will edit or comment on this with more information.

robooneus
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  • Holy crap, still almost half of a percent. Anyway, maybe you could expand a bit on how ems are not difficult to use, as the OP seems to think. For instance, if you want some text to be one and a half times as big as the surrounding text, you can just write `1.5em` while if you do everything in pixels, you'll need to do the math! – Mr Lister Jul 27 '13 at 11:55
  • Thanks for responding. I think my question has being missed because i used the word 'difficult'. I've added context to my original question to help clarify what I'm after. – Steven Tew Jul 27 '13 at 12:16