Visual presentation
Problem
Applications often assume a fixed visual context: a specific font size, screen density, contrast level, or screen orientation. When users adjust their system display settings (for example, increasing the system font size or rotating their device), the application may clip text, produce layout overflows, lock to an unusable orientation, or simply ignore the user’s preference entirely. Insufficient color contrast makes text and UI components unreadable for users with low vision or color blindness.
Goal
- Text scales with the user’s system font size setting where layout permits.
- Layouts degrade gracefully when text is larger than expected (no clipping or unreadable overflow).
- The system text scale is only suppressed as a last resort on layout-critical components, and never silently.
- Content is not locked to a single screen orientation unless that orientation is essential.
- Text and meaningful UI components meet minimum color contrast ratios (4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text and UI components).