Enlarging the Text on Web Pages..

A lot of my customers are “senior surfers” and would like to enlarge the text on web pages. They try to do this in Internet Explorer by left clicking View, then Text Size then either Larger or Largest.

But there are many web sites that specify the exact text size of most sections of the site and changing to Larger or Largest has little or no effect. A good example is http://news.bbc.co.uk The sites do this to maintain the layout exactly as they designed it.

But you can override the site designers and get the text larger (but the layout might become a little untidy). You do it by left clicking Tools, then Internet Options. Select the General tab and then left click the Accessibility button in the bottom right hand corner. You then need to select the third option - “Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages” and then OK and OK again.

Now the View, Text Size options will affect all the text. (But all text will be the same size - headings will be the same size as body text)

You may even find that the Medium setting is fine, now that it applies to all the text.



If you use Firefox, the View, Text Size options are different (Increase, Normal, Decrease) and work as you would expect and want them to - they change the size of all text, but in proportion. Again, because you have overridden the careful design, sometimes the layout suffers.