Dropping Knowledge

I had no sooner posted about the shrinking fonts below when I encountered this website via Blog Advance. I thought the concept sounded interesting and eminently supportable. I still do. But when I arrived at their site I found them to be an egregious example of the very thing I had just finished ranting about. Only in this case they were soliciting questions for initiating dialog in the global community on issues that impact our lives.

At first I thought that my beef with font size was frivolous compared to the questions about poverty, war, education, free speech, tolerance, justice, compassion…. But then I realized that it was relevant because the creators and promoters of this website would be the last ones to want to exclude someone like me from their dialog. And the first ones to want to know how their web design was discouraging me from participating. So I braved the 6pt(?) question form and found a way to ask my question in under 250 characters. This is what I asked:

Why are font sizes shrinking all over the web, thus barring the visually impaired from forums like this? Can't we make better use of the technology to make all feel like valued contributors to community and dialog?

In spite of this impediment for people like me, I am still excited about the concept of this site. I’ve barely scratched the surface of what it is about. They are planning to hold a live round-table discussion in Germany on September 9. Go ask a question and join the dialog.