Newspaper Association of America: Recasting print preferences

Sophisticated view and print preferences extend the bounds of accessibility.

The Site

The Newspaper Association of America (NAA), an umbrella trade organisation for the US newspaper industry, allows users of its website to set the font style and size of pages to suit their personal preferences.

All pages within the About NAA section, which includes a range of corporate information and services including press and jobs, have a Story Toolbox in the right-hand panel. This includes dropdown choosers for ‘Font’ and ‘Size’ as well as options to e-mail or print the page. Font offers six type faces, Size one-point increments from nine to 24 point inclusive. The page content displays according to the preferences set; these are then held when moving from page to page or for printing off. The surrounding template elements are unaffected.

The Takeaway

Users can, of course, play with their browser settings to vary the font style and size of page displays, but many may not know how and few would be bothered to take time out to do so while in the middle of viewing. NAA’s Story Toolbox therefore makes the option explicit and easy to put into effect.

While it may seem like a neat but inessential add-on – even a distraction – there is a serious practical benefit to it. In particular, the ability to alter the font size by increments is an accessibility plus – and one markedly more sophisticated than the standard three-option choice – that is likely to be valued by the many readers who don’t think of themselves as having impaired sight but aren’t seeing things as clearly as they used to. Extending it to page print-outs puts the cherry on top. It’s the sort of consideration that NAA is more attuned to than most, given the nature of its business, though the idea of allowing readers control over type styling is probably as revolutionary to its members as anything Web 2.0 can come up with.

First published on 10 May, 2007