Ask HN: Add font-size controls to HN for vision impaired please?
1. Thank you for an amazing resource and for considering dark mode in yesterday's thread [0]
2. A request: I frequently use an iPad pro to read HN (Chrome, Safari), and because there are no meaningful font-size controls, there is no way to magnify the next without using really awkward usability hacks (zoom). And since zooming (either using gestures in-browser or the usability tools from Apple) doesn't trigger any kind of word wrap, it's a terrible pan from side to side experience to read HN content as lonnnnnnng wrapping lines. Third party tools also top-out in terms of font size.
Proposal: A simple floated div with links in the upper right with few font sizes displayed (a small letter A, a medium A, and a large A, or a "Font: +/-" approach) that appended a query string with a font size variable to the current URL (or set a cookie, cough) allowing HN to change the base font size in CSS (say, the body declaration to font-size: 1em, font-size: 1.25em or font-size: 1.5em respectively) and then declaring the other font sizes in relative terms[0] would be so helpful.
The style sheet changes would be minimal: what was previously font-size: 8.5pt becomes font-size: 85% and so on.
Example changes to news.css:
body { font-size:1em (or 1.25em or 1.5em ... etc. as dictated by the query var); color:#828282; }
.default { font-size: 100%; } .admin { font-size: 85%; } .title { font-size: 100%; } .subtext { font-size: 70%; } .yclinks { font-size: 80%; } .pagetop { font-size: 100%; } .comhead { font-size: 80%; } .comment { font-size: 90%; }
Thanks for considering this, Mark
[0] Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23197966 [1] Usability & Web Accessibility: https://usability.yale.edu/web-accessibility/articles/zoom-resizing-text