Way back in the mists of history -- figure the mid-'90s, give or take an IPO or two -- I used to do some odd bits of print design for a blindness-related non-profit here on the East Coast. One day, when conversation turned to the org's web presence, they mentioned how they had been quite deliberate in "oversizing" everything on their site to cater to users with failing eyesight -- mostly the elderly, as it turns out. Taking a look at the site today, it appears that not much has changed, so I guess the philosophy must still be working for them.

Mind you, this was a destination with an already assumed audience of seniors/others with vision problems. Should the same thinking be carried over to a more general-interest site that caters largely to a 50+ demographic (wine, opera, public radio/TV)?* Sure. Perhaps in not so drastic a manner as that first example, but hey, it never hurts to remember that those users most likely to need oversized type/graphics -- seniors -- are also the ones are least likely to understand client-side fixes like text-zoom and adjusting monitor resolution.*

My best guess is that some clearly marked CSS controls on the page might be the best compromise between wanting a clean, elegant design and offering maximum readability to users. Worth thinking about, at least...

*This and all other groundless generalizations in this post are the property of the Poster. And Major League Baseball.

It is a logical error to conclude that since something happend one way in the past, it will happen the same way in the future. I think this one is going to be done right.

Except that it already is happening. The Bush administration just rejected a request from the state department for 25,000 peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan. There are now only 4500 peacekeeping troops, pretty much all in Kabul, and none of them American. Meanwhile the American troops that are in the area are supposedly still hunting terrorists. However, there is evidence that on mulitple occasions they have been mislead by friendly warlords into attacking personal enemies whom they label as Al-Qaeda forces. Karzai's government is already shaky and the Americans haven't even left yet.