Services using AF do not resize text

[shabana-ali]

Increasing the font size on Chrome, Firefox or IE11 does not increase the size of the text.

GOV.UK Design System specifies font size in "em" and "px" as fallback. AF only has "px".

Seen on Vat View and Change https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ElwRokMTBHszYPdaJGPD3NoQCSAfgwnZ4zSPGnQHM7E/edit

[adamliptrot-oc]

Digging into the wording of the criteria. (https://www.w3.org/TR/2016/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20161007/G142)
Sufficient techniques: Using a technology that has commonly-available user agents that support zoom

The objective of this technique is to ensure content can be scaled uniformly by using a Web technology supported by user agents that change text size via a Zoom tool.

and

This technique requires that the zoom function preserve all spatial relationships on the page and that all functionality continues to be available.

and

Internet Explorer 7 and Opera 9 provide a zoom function that scales HTML/CSS page content uniformly.

So that suggests that just using the page zoom is enough.
I know that there is some chatter on the WCAG boards about potentially dropping this criteria in the future.

Notable note: (https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2016/WD-WCAG20-TECHS-20160105/F69)

Note: The Working Group has discovered many misunderstandings about how to test this failure. We are planning to revise this failure in a future update. Until then, if the content passes the success criterion using any of the listed sufficient techniques, then it does not meet this failure.
Increase the text size of the content by 200%.
Check that no text is clipped, truncated, or obscured.

So basically as long as the font can be increased by 200% in some way (whether that includes the other parts of the page or not) and no readability is lost then we are good.

[adamliptrot-oc]

I think it is worth testing and reporting. And I’d like to see the issue fixed in AF.
Just because it isn’t a WCAG doesn’t mean it doesn’t cause an issue for someone (who maybe wants bigger text but doesn’t want a page to take on a mobile layout).
So we should report it under “other accessibility/usability issues” but don’t flag it as WCAG.

[adamliptrot-oc]

Plat-UI performed a spike to look at implementing non-px font-sizing in AF.
Due to the complexities involved, the high-traffic nature of services still using AF, the upgrade paths and the presence of large amounts of service-specific css in older services it was thought that it would be better to leave AF as it is.

[ashfaqhussain357]

New playfrontend library used. Only 5 or so services are using assets frontend so not deemed an issue anymore.

[shabana-ali]

https://hmrcdigital.slack.com/archives/C01RVNY177E/p1715075868766259

May 2024 - four frontend microservices still currently using assets-frontend.