Adrian Roselli

In 2026, you can avoid the bad parts.

> Let's start with the basics: if you write`font-size: 16px`then `16px` is the size of what? Sadly, the answer is "nothing in particular" -- this is a size of a virtual box around the glyph, but the box isn't tight, and the size of the glyph varies, depending on the font. Luckily, `font-size-adjust` property can fix it, and make `font-size` consistent across fonts.

All modern browsers default to 16px, but for accessibility and sanity reasons, we shouldn't use pixels.

By default, 16px = 1rem. You don't need to declare it; it just is.

See "The Ultimate Ideal Bestest Base Font Size That Everyone Is Keeping a Secret, Especially Chet" - https://adrianroselli.com/2024/03/the-ultimate-ideal-bestest-base-font-size-that-everyone-is-keeping-a-secret-especially-chet.html

> Can you just set `font-size: 18px`or whatever works best for your chosen font? I think the answer is yes, but there are some caveats to keep in mind.

If you want to manually increase the base size, using relative units is the answer: `html { font-size: 1.125rem }`. Since by default, 1rem = 16px, 1.125rem is 18px.

> Setting `font-size` in your CSS disables that second approach.

Setting `font-size` in pixels disables changing the browser's default size; works fine with relative sizes.

If the goal is not having to learn the intricacies of CSS, just use the built-in type scale:

| CSS absolute-size values | xx-small | x-small | small | medium | large | x-large | xx-large…

I wasn't under the impression it is a W3C site, for all I know it is AI generated and looks it to me. But, there are other blog posts I've coming across where this is discussed and that site did outline my point well enough which is changing norms like this can be hard for screen reader users who need to adapt to <a>, <button> and <button action> being controls performing very similar if not overlapping behaviour.

Currently these changes in norms happen because developers use links as buttons and buttons as links which can create confusion for the screen reader user / visual user who expects certain behavior based of the visual presentation of the control. Making button[action] standard in HTML codifies that behaviour though doesn't it?

I get that you are trying to effectively solve this problem, but it isn't so easy when this group of people are more reliant on norms. Maybe they would embrace a solution here if they were engaged with is all.

- https://adrianroselli.com/2016/01/links-buttons-submits-and-divs-oh-hell.html
- https://adrianroselli.com/2023/08/styling-links-and-buttons.html
- https://karlgroves.com/links-are-not-buttons-neither-are-divs-and-spans/

When I checked in 2024 or 2025, Windows Narrator announced it differently in Chrome, Firefox, Edge (Chromium mode) and Edge (IE mode), and none of them worked how I would expect them to. Adrian Roselli's verdict (https://adrianroselli.com/2025/01/updated-brief-note-on-description-list-support.html):

> Description list support continues to be generally good (with VoiceOver still the outlier), even if you may not like how it is supported.

You shouldn't try to fix this kind of thing by mangling the HTML, since (1) users tend to be used to their screen reader's quirks, and (2) in situations like these, making it juuuust right in one screen reader is likely to make it incomprehensible in another. But it is important to be aware of these quirks, so you don't accidentally design an interface that relies on less-quirky behaviour.

This has been tried and doesn't work, which doesn't mean it will never work in the future! There are a few companies offering solutions in this space, but they don't work, are often worse than the problems they're trying to solve and are a privacy disaster. The companies peddling them often engage in shady business practices, like falsely claiming that their overlays can protect you from ADA lawsuits[1], while actually suing the people who expose their lies[2]. Most accessibility practitioners and disabled users themselves are warning the public to avoid those tools[3].

[1] https://adrianroselli.com/2020/06/accessibe-will-get-you-sued.html
[2] https://adrianroselli.com/2023/05/audioeye-is-suing-me.html
[3] https://overlayfactsheet.com

This looks like a nice way to add some features to your website. But to all reading: Overlays are NOT the way to make your website accessible. They frequently do not work as intended, and sometimes even harm accessibility [0]. One particular overlay was so bad that it got sued under the ADA [1].

Unfortunately the only way to make your website accessible is to put in the work to make sure it complied with the standards. There’s lots of resources online for this. See [2] as a starting point.

[0] https://adrianroselli.com/2022/09/overlays-underwhelm-at-id24.html

[1] https://adrianroselli.com/2022/03/faciliti-will-get-you-sued.html

[2] https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/guides/wcag/

The TLD surprised me, I didn't know you could request one. The article I found that covers off on purchasing (leasing?) a TLD ironically used Google as an example. The article is from 2011.

"The process itself may be relatively straightforward. ICANN will make applications available (get the May 2011 draft of the Applicant Guidebook) from January 12, 2012 through April 12, 2012, giving companies time to develop a marketing plan and come up with justification to pay the $185,000 application fee and, if approved, the annual $25,000 fee. "

Source: http://adrianroselli.com/2011/06/make-your-own-tld-i-want-bacon.html