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It’s not just accessibility. I’ve last track of the number of times I’ve seen a mobile website with a table that extends past the right side of the viewport and

by amluto 5y ago

It’s not just accessibility. I’ve last track of the number of times I’ve seen a mobile website with a table that extends past the right side of the viewport and zoom disabled. You can’t scroll, and you can’t zoom, so you can’t read the table.

Reason077 5y ago
What mobile browser? On iOS Safari, all the example websites mentioned by the OP allowed me to zoom. I guess Safari doesn’t allow zoom to be disabled by websites? Maybe all browsers should work this way?
- Saint_Genet 5y ago
  It says so in the article
- rectang 5y ago
  I use iOS Firefox, because I love desktop Firefox and I have Firefo set up with account sync across all my devices. But there's a feature of desktop Firefox which isn't available on the iOS version: remember zoom setting for a domain. iOS Firefox does have pinch-to-zoom, but having to use it every time I navigate to a page is tiresome. iOS Firefox is a small niche choice and not the same codebase as desktop Firefox because Apple requires that you use their rendering engine. So I'm not sure it makes sense for Mozilla to dedicate the kind of resources to it to implement all the features I might want, and I don't have a lot of gripes. But as a datapoint in this thread, zoom is really important to me, and I miss it when it's not available. I shake my head every time I visit Google search results on my iPad because the text is so tiny.
- bradlys 5y ago
  I've had this happen on iOS Safari. It happens everywhere.
  - Reason077 5y ago
    Weird. I don’t see this, or maybe I’m misunderstanding the problem. Do you have an example site?
PaulHoule 5y ago
Unfortunately people see accessibility as a burden that a small minority puts on the rest of us, but really it is something that benefits everyone. For instance, normally sighted people or even people with "normal" nearsightedness, farsightedness, or presbyopia benefit from adequate contrast. Text "size" is another thing because people should be able to control it, particularly given the wide range of different devices that are out there.
- warning26 5y ago
  > Unfortunately people see accessibility as a burden that a small minority puts on the rest of us, but really it is something that benefits everyone Depends on the individual case — I’ve seen entire projects get scrapped because it wouldn’t be feasible to make an “accessible” version. Some things just aren’t work for everyone and that’s okay.
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    A flip side is that any bureaucratic mandate is a "free pass" to reject anything that's hard to find another justification for rejecting... In terms of institutional requirements it is a gift as much as a burden.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    Accessibility is like performance, and security, and portability: You don't create the product, and then "spoon a little security in" right before shipping. You build it from the start as secure, with security as a first-class goal, and gate features on whether or not they are secure. Same for accessibility. You don't try to take an existing inaccessible project and wave a magic accessibility wand around it late in the game. It should be a first class design principle. If you are hiring a UI designer or interaction designer, pay attention to how seriously they take accessibility in their designs. If they're good, their designs are accessible by default, because as a Cousin Comment said, accessibility is not just "usable by the disabled" it's "usable by everyone".
    - warning26 5y ago
dyingkneepad 5y ago
I know exactly what you're talking about. A lot of times those tables are sized exactly for a horizontal view, so always try tilting your phone 90 degrees and it may work.
Daemon404 5y ago
This is a constant issue for me (Chrome on Android) on GMail's Web UI (yes, I insist on using the Web UI...). So many emails are entirely unreadable since they go right off the right side, and you can't zoom.
mc4ndr3 5y ago
Many websites have this problem with their main navigation bar.
civilized 5y ago
Wow. I had no idea that this was something explicitly imposed on us by developers! I thought it was some kind of inherent issue with mobile.
calvinmorrison 5y ago
It's just constant. I know I am an oddball but I use firefox, which at this point is basically unsupported online. Pages just _dont_ work right. Of course my 600 extensions, from tridactyl(vim kb) to no script tend to break even more. But it frustrates me to no end that a browser is no longer a "User" Agent and is now just seen as a... virtual machine for apps?
- jandrese 5y ago
  As a fellow Firefox user this is not my experience at all. Most stuff works fine once I allow the necessary subset in uMatrix. Some things are a pain in the ass, like embedded video widgets that need to load in dozens of scripts from all over the web before they'll finally get to the actual video frames, but I can pretty much always get stuff to work. One tip: Don't try to install too many general filtering extensions (uMatrix, Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, etc...) at the same time because they will end up fighting.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Same here..I don't even have another browser installed on my main machine. Never have the need for it, FF works great. I think the OP has too many plugins :)
    - calvinmorrison 5y ago
      now some apps grab keys from the browser like "control-F" won't give me a native search modal dialog - instead providing their own search widget. Things like this break experience of the web for me. Combine that with tridactyl which i prefer to use to navigate around and it's even worse. My addon list isnt that big either... it's just that I disable a lot of things as well, like webGL and other stuff. Suprising number of sites needlessly use these things.
      - bovine3dom 5y ago
        You might be able to fix the ctrl-f thing in Tridactyl with `:help blacklistkeys`, although I'm not sure it will catch keys with modifiers. Follow https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl/issues/2712 https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl/issues/2712 if you want updates when that's added. It would help if you could link to the website that hijacks ctrl-f in that issue :)
manholio 5y ago
Another maddening thing are tiny fonts on mobile devices and pinch zoom does not reflow text. So you can't read without zooming in, and you can't see the whole page when you do, so you need to put your phone in landscape mode and drag left and right to read each and every row.
- b112 5y ago
  Even though loads of browsers support it on desktop, bizarrely not so much on mobile. Even better, one chrome issue/bug report, had google devs on the tracker explaining how it's fine, and how each website should just fix things. They were blathering on about how websites are broken, should be fixed, utter absurd. The sheer, unmitigated gall, of saying "screw users" is beyond comprehension. Google: unless you want another series of Professor Farnsworth posters around HQ, fix it!
- account42 5y ago
  This is mostly due to the broken by default rendering of mobile browsers that emulate a larger desktop browser window unless the website specifically opts into the sane responsive behavior via the <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> tag. This is especially idiotic since mobile browsers now have an explicit desktop mode that forces this behavior.
ruined 5y ago
that's accessibility
zionic 5y ago
Maybe this is a good place to ask since there's a lot of web devs here: What is SO effing hard about drawing within the screen on web?! I can't tell you the number of times I've seen this issue. Just the other day I saw reddit's sign up form is totally broken on iOS, you have to swap between landscape/portrait multiple times and hope whatever garbage layout engine it uses redraws the button inside the screen.
- dreamcompiler 5y ago
  I think it's because almost all web design happens on computer screens, not mobile devices. More important, all web designers show their bosses their creations on a big computer screen in a conference room--the bigger the better so everybody can go "oooh!" and "aaaah!" and the designer can get a big fat raise. I expect it's fairly rare for the employer of a web designer to give a shit what the site looks like on a phone, which means the designers don't give a shit either.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    What's strange about that is that a collection of old devices is very cheap. It's trivial to have a box and test them.
    - Ensorceled 5y ago
      "People using those devices are not our target demographic."
      - HWR_14 5y ago
        Then they complain that people in that demographic don't use their product. Because it turns out that people in that demographic exist and they're trapped in a bubble where anyone who is using an old device is a child, elderly person or homeless.
        Ensorceled 5y ago
HelloNurse 5y ago
Hipster logic: if it works on my machine, you have the wrong machine.
tomrod 5y ago
Wikipedia comes to mind for this!
dheera 5y ago
Sometimes you need to prevent zoom in order to implement your own zoom though. For example if you're making a WebGL app, or if you're making a map zooming widget that needs to progressively load more local detail as the user zooms in on an area. If you don't disable zoom, the OS and your zoom logic will be fighting over the pinch gesture.
Reason077 5y ago
maximum-scale and user-scalable=no seem like browser mis-features. Perhaps the OP would have more success appealing to browser developers to follow Apple and Samsung’s lead, and get browsers to ignore them?
- account42 5y ago
  It's definitely always a mis-feature for websites. It can make sense for webapps in rare cases [0]. Well, disabling the pinch gesture makes sense for those, ideally the browser would still provide another way to change the zoom. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31274454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31274454
darekkay 5y ago
> you can’t read the table Which makes the table content inaccessible. It _is_ an accessibility issue. Here's the definition I prefer, that does not focus on "disabilities" (which many people equate "accessibility" with): > When we say a site is accessible, we mean that the site's content is available, and its functionality can be operated, by literally anyone. https://web.dev/accessibility/ https://web.dev/accessibility/

by amluto 5y ago

Reason077 5y ago

What mobile browser? On iOS Safari, all the example websites mentioned by the OP allowed me to zoom. I guess Safari doesn’t allow zoom to be disabled by websites? Maybe all browsers should work this way?

Saint_Genet 5y ago
It says so in the article
rectang 5y ago
I use iOS Firefox, because I love desktop Firefox and I have Firefo set up with account sync across all my devices. But there's a feature of desktop Firefox which isn't available on the iOS version: remember zoom setting for a domain. iOS Firefox does have pinch-to-zoom, but having to use it every time I navigate to a page is tiresome. iOS Firefox is a small niche choice and not the same codebase as desktop Firefox because Apple requires that you use their rendering engine. So I'm not sure it makes sense for Mozilla to dedicate the kind of resources to it to implement all the features I might want, and I don't have a lot of gripes. But as a datapoint in this thread, zoom is really important to me, and I miss it when it's not available. I shake my head every time I visit Google search results on my iPad because the text is so tiny.
bradlys 5y ago
I've had this happen on iOS Safari. It happens everywhere.
- Reason077 5y ago
  Weird. I don’t see this, or maybe I’m misunderstanding the problem. Do you have an example site?

PaulHoule 5y ago

Unfortunately people see accessibility as a burden that a small minority puts on the rest of us, but really it is something that benefits everyone. For instance, normally sighted people or even people with "normal" nearsightedness, farsightedness, or presbyopia benefit from adequate contrast. Text "size" is another thing because people should be able to control it, particularly given the wide range of different devices that are out there.

warning26 5y ago
> Unfortunately people see accessibility as a burden that a small minority puts on the rest of us, but really it is something that benefits everyone Depends on the individual case — I’ve seen entire projects get scrapped because it wouldn’t be feasible to make an “accessible” version. Some things just aren’t work for everyone and that’s okay.
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  A flip side is that any bureaucratic mandate is a "free pass" to reject anything that's hard to find another justification for rejecting... In terms of institutional requirements it is a gift as much as a burden.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Accessibility is like performance, and security, and portability: You don't create the product, and then "spoon a little security in" right before shipping. You build it from the start as secure, with security as a first-class goal, and gate features on whether or not they are secure. Same for accessibility. You don't try to take an existing inaccessible project and wave a magic accessibility wand around it late in the game. It should be a first class design principle. If you are hiring a UI designer or interaction designer, pay attention to how seriously they take accessibility in their designs. If they're good, their designs are accessible by default, because as a Cousin Comment said, accessibility is not just "usable by the disabled" it's "usable by everyone".
  - warning26 5y ago

dyingkneepad 5y ago

I know exactly what you're talking about. A lot of times those tables are sized exactly for a horizontal view, so always try tilting your phone 90 degrees and it may work.

Daemon404 5y ago

This is a constant issue for me (Chrome on Android) on GMail's Web UI (yes, I insist on using the Web UI...). So many emails are entirely unreadable since they go right off the right side, and you can't zoom.

mc4ndr3 5y ago

Many websites have this problem with their main navigation bar.

civilized 5y ago

Wow. I had no idea that this was something explicitly imposed on us by developers! I thought it was some kind of inherent issue with mobile.

calvinmorrison 5y ago

It's just constant. I know I am an oddball but I use firefox, which at this point is basically unsupported online. Pages just _dont_ work right. Of course my 600 extensions, from tridactyl(vim kb) to no script tend to break even more. But it frustrates me to no end that a browser is no longer a "User" Agent and is now just seen as a... virtual machine for apps?

jandrese 5y ago
As a fellow Firefox user this is not my experience at all. Most stuff works fine once I allow the necessary subset in uMatrix. Some things are a pain in the ass, like embedded video widgets that need to load in dozens of scripts from all over the web before they'll finally get to the actual video frames, but I can pretty much always get stuff to work. One tip: Don't try to install too many general filtering extensions (uMatrix, Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, etc...) at the same time because they will end up fighting.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Same here..I don't even have another browser installed on my main machine. Never have the need for it, FF works great. I think the OP has too many plugins :)
  - calvinmorrison 5y ago
    now some apps grab keys from the browser like "control-F" won't give me a native search modal dialog - instead providing their own search widget. Things like this break experience of the web for me. Combine that with tridactyl which i prefer to use to navigate around and it's even worse. My addon list isnt that big either... it's just that I disable a lot of things as well, like webGL and other stuff. Suprising number of sites needlessly use these things.
    - bovine3dom 5y ago
      You might be able to fix the ctrl-f thing in Tridactyl with `:help blacklistkeys`, although I'm not sure it will catch keys with modifiers. Follow https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl/issues/2712 https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl/issues/2712 if you want updates when that's added. It would help if you could link to the website that hijacks ctrl-f in that issue :)

manholio 5y ago

Another maddening thing are tiny fonts on mobile devices and pinch zoom does not reflow text. So you can't read without zooming in, and you can't see the whole page when you do, so you need to put your phone in landscape mode and drag left and right to read each and every row.

b112 5y ago
Even though loads of browsers support it on desktop, bizarrely not so much on mobile. Even better, one chrome issue/bug report, had google devs on the tracker explaining how it's fine, and how each website should just fix things. They were blathering on about how websites are broken, should be fixed, utter absurd. The sheer, unmitigated gall, of saying "screw users" is beyond comprehension. Google: unless you want another series of Professor Farnsworth posters around HQ, fix it!
account42 5y ago
This is mostly due to the broken by default rendering of mobile browsers that emulate a larger desktop browser window unless the website specifically opts into the sane responsive behavior via the <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> tag. This is especially idiotic since mobile browsers now have an explicit desktop mode that forces this behavior.

ruined 5y ago

that's accessibility

zionic 5y ago

Maybe this is a good place to ask since there's a lot of web devs here: What is SO effing hard about drawing within the screen on web?! I can't tell you the number of times I've seen this issue. Just the other day I saw reddit's sign up form is totally broken on iOS, you have to swap between landscape/portrait multiple times and hope whatever garbage layout engine it uses redraws the button inside the screen.

dreamcompiler 5y ago
I think it's because almost all web design happens on computer screens, not mobile devices. More important, all web designers show their bosses their creations on a big computer screen in a conference room--the bigger the better so everybody can go "oooh!" and "aaaah!" and the designer can get a big fat raise. I expect it's fairly rare for the employer of a web designer to give a shit what the site looks like on a phone, which means the designers don't give a shit either.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  What's strange about that is that a collection of old devices is very cheap. It's trivial to have a box and test them.
  - Ensorceled 5y ago
    "People using those devices are not our target demographic."
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      Then they complain that people in that demographic don't use their product. Because it turns out that people in that demographic exist and they're trapped in a bubble where anyone who is using an old device is a child, elderly person or homeless.
      - Ensorceled 5y ago

HelloNurse 5y ago

Hipster logic: if it works on my machine, you have the wrong machine.

tomrod 5y ago

Wikipedia comes to mind for this!

dheera 5y ago

Sometimes you need to prevent zoom in order to implement your own zoom though. For example if you're making a WebGL app, or if you're making a map zooming widget that needs to progressively load more local detail as the user zooms in on an area. If you don't disable zoom, the OS and your zoom logic will be fighting over the pinch gesture.

Reason077 5y ago

maximum-scale and user-scalable=no seem like browser mis-features. Perhaps the OP would have more success appealing to browser developers to follow Apple and Samsung’s lead, and get browsers to ignore them?

account42 5y ago
It's definitely always a mis-feature for websites. It can make sense for webapps in rare cases [0]. Well, disabling the pinch gesture makes sense for those, ideally the browser would still provide another way to change the zoom. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31274454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31274454

darekkay 5y ago

> you can’t read the table Which makes the table content inaccessible. It _is_ an accessibility issue. Here's the definition I prefer, that does not focus on "disabilities" (which many people equate "accessibility" with): > When we say a site is accessible, we mean that the site's content is available, and its functionality can be operated, by literally anyone. https://web.dev/accessibility/ https://web.dev/accessibility/