Zoom layouts

Mon, Jun 5, 2006 @ 11:26 pm3 Comments

I came across an article today on A List Apart written by Joe Clark: Big, Stark & Chunky (it is 18 months old - I know, I should read ALA more often) which was aimed at promoting the use of ‘zoom layouts’, which are those designed for people with low or impaired vision.

I certainly think that these alternative low vision styles have become more prevalent in recent times (this site feature’s one) but was a little disappointed to find the comments for the ALA article, which were supposed to contain more examples, seem to have gone missing.

And the link provided to the ZoomLayouts page on CSS-Discuss doesn’t actually have any examples.

So I thought I’d start my own list and add to it over time. Feel free to suggest your own links in the comments.

• Little Blue Plane
• Juicy Studio
• 456 Berea Street
• TJK Design
• Gr0w Collective
• Stop Design
• Dustin Diaz
• TheManInBlue
• South Downs College
• PoptelTechnology
• Open Interface
• Point Studios
• Overcaffeinated
• Mark Boulton
• KuraFire Network
• Jedisthlm.com

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Tags: Accessibility, CSS, HTML, layouts, zoom

Posted in: CSS

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3 responses to Zoom layouts. Add your own.

Comments

1. 1

   Mike Cherim | June 10th, 2006 at 2:06 am

   I’d like to suggest three sites that are of elastic design:

   Accessites.org
   GBHXonline.com
   And my CSS Zen Garden submission (only elastic submission that I know of).

   Mike

2. 2

   John Faulds | June 10th, 2006 at 10:35 am

   Hi Mike,
   Maybe I didn’t interpret Joe’s article properly, but my take on it was that a zoom layout was actually an alternative, high-contrast style that had already been ‘zoomed’ for low vision users.
   It seems to me that ‘zoom’ and ‘elastic’ are probably two slightly different things.
   I’ll leave your links here though because it sounds like a good idea for another article to list just elastic designs. (There’s at least one other Zen Garden design I can think of - will have to track it down.)

3. 3

   Mike Cherim | June 10th, 2006 at 12:18 pm

   Agreed, I didn’t. I always thought a zoom layout was the effect noted upon enlargment of the entire site, syn: elastic. Now don’t I feel silly. I thought the other style was just considered large-text/high-contrast. I actually didn’t realize the termed zoom was coined for that type. Man, I swear, a day doesn’t go by without my learning something. Thank goodness for that

   Great site, by the way, John. Really quite impressive.