If You Turn off Device Zoom with a Meta Tag, You’re Evil
Adding the following meta tag to the head of an HTML page will prevent the user from scaling the page, either using their browser controls or with “pinch-to-zoom” on a touchscreen device:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" />
Although rare, it’s still seen in the wild. Designers typically do this because:
- They haven’t made their designs work responsively or don’t know how to
- They don’t understand the implications for accessibility
The result is that this prevents users with vision difficulties from scaling the page.
Don’t be these designers. Let your users choose how to view and manipulate your interfaces. Away from web pages, offer these scaling controls in desktop and native mobile software. iOS and Android both have built-in support...