Accessibility / Text size

I have my browser zoom set to what is ideal for me on most websites, but some of the text on here (particularly the "your books" area) is far too small for me. It would be nice to be able to set the site according to physical needs. Dark mode would help too, and I see on another thread that that is being looked into.

Pardon me for adding another (off-topic) minor gripe in the same thread, but I keep getting asked to set language every time I log in. Is there a reason that our preferred language is not remembered?

Hello and welcome to LibraryThing. I can’t answer the technical questions; but I can tell you there is no need to logout.
I may have done so once or twice in the nearly two decades I’ve been here; but only testing some issue.

There is an option to "change style" at the bottom of every page. Have you tried seeing if any of those help with the too-small text? There are two that specifically use larger fonts, and several that are smaller.

The catalogue view/"your books" is one of the last parts of the site to be updated to the new LT 2.0 design, because of the complexity and need to fit so much on the page. (LT 2.0 is what the version of the site that matches modern best practices and better accessibility is called. The catalogue view hasn't changed much in 20 years!)

Because it's not the new design, the text in the catalogue may not be responsive to the Change Style settings.

But we've been told dark mode is soon - once the Add Books page is updated, and there's been progress on that. :)

>2 2wonderY: Privacy, and managing exposure to data harvesters, are very important to me. I clear my cookie cache multiple times per day, and have my browsers set to wipe everything as soon as I close the windows, so I will always need to log in when I visit, even if I never click "log out". That's not specific for my site use here, just my standard practice for internet usage.

>3 keristars: Thank you. I have found that "Change style" function, and moving to "System Large" font has helped. You're quite right though, that the personal library/catalogue remains unaffected by that change. Here's to hoping the Dark Mode function helps a little more too,

Thank you both for your input.

>4 WonkyBloke: If you clear your cookies, you can't expect most settings to stick.

>5 MarthaJeanne: If the site can remember all my books, Talk posts, reviews, and everything else. I don't think it's a huge leap to expect it to be able to remember a font size (or which flavour of English I speak).

Obviously, I'm only referring to after I've logged back in (which is done in a lovely big font by the way). I've had display settings remembered on plenty of other sites, so I don't think I'm being totally naive here... or at least I hope not. After all, if we're talking about site-wide accessibility settings, having to negotiate those settings in a teeny weeny font every time would kind of scupper the purpose of having the settings, and I can't be the only privacy conscious user on here.

>6 WonkyBloke: If you use different devices, having the environmental variables (font sizes for example) in the account settings will be a pain - you may need different values based on the size of your screen (or the type of screen). Having them in your session (aka cookies) always makes more sense.

May not work for the way you use the site but it is the standard usually (and I will hate it if the site changes that).

>7 AnnieMod: That's an aspect I'd not considered...

That is partially applicable for me, as while I only tend to use my laptop (I refuse to carry a smart phone - same reasoning), I do use multiple browsers on it, so I can have more than one site open, without them reading each others cached data/site usage, etc. Regardless, I won't be relaxing my privacy/security standards on any site I use. Giving Google, Meta, Amazon, and all the other data stalkers the slip, is an even bigger passion for me than reading is. :D

I don't know what browser you use, but at least some allows you to have different zoom for different websites. Works at least on Firefox and Edge.

I look at LT a bit more zoomed out than most of the Web (90% rather than 100%) because Tim loves white space a little too much.

>9 AndreasJ: At least one of the Change Styles addresses the padding and margins (The Lorax) but it removes nearly all of it, so I find it uncomfortable to use. Though, of course, I can only use mobile, touchscreen devices, where a little extra space between elements is helpful. :)

Vivaldi offers per-site zoom, too, as well as a lot of privacy features. I think Brave is another with heavy privacy features?

>1 WonkyBloke: The way you worded some of your posts has me wondering. Have you blocked Facebook and the common trackers at the DNS level on your router? You can also preserve cookies for specific sites when you clear the rest.

>9 AndreasJ: I haven't been successful in finding zoom per site settings so far, but will certainly keep an eye out.

>10 keristars: Between my in-house kit and VPN, my settings are tight enough to break some sites, and be totally excluded (assumed to be a bot) on others. However, if a site won't let me in because it can't harvest enough data, I'm quite content to be blocked, as it's not worth the price of admission. Embedded social media content doesn't work on any site. I just get a white frame where it would be for others. I won't allow cookie clearing exceptions for any site, to avoid cross site tracking. Even though LibraryThing seems better than a lot of sites in terms of respecting privacy, I think it's safer to maintain the same strict settings across all internet usage. It's rarely the visited site themselves that's the problem, but the infrastructure elements lurking in the background

>11 WonkyBloke: So you don't have the trackers blocked in your router settings? You might want to look into it - it prevents them from loading at all, so they can't use IP tracking or browser fingerprint. It's a bit of a hassle to set up because of needing to get the addresses for all the major trackers, but if you're really serious about privacy it's a basic step because it handles that infrastructure for every device on your internet connection.

of course visitors can't get to facebook or Instagram while at your house, but I'm guessing that's not a problem for you.

>12 keristars: I use a VPN, so the router isn't directly connecting to the addresses anyway. It's proxied. The VPN has the facility to strip those out though. So I believe I am doing what you suggest, albeit via a different route (the route the traffic is flowing). The router is routing through a second router, which has the trackers blocked. I might not be technically accurate in my description there, but I believe I have the premise of what you're suggesting covered.

If visitors do want to use my wifi, they'll be doing so according to their own privacy settings, routed separate from my own usage and data

>11 WonkyBloke: Most of the time these days sites aren't blocking you because they can't harvest enough data. They are blocking you because you're hiding enough information that you look like a bot. We block bots as much as we can here because it's become an epidemic that is costing us time and money. We get over 10 MILLION bot hits...a DAY. That costs us real money and resources to support hits from things that aren't actual humans and members of the site. So we attempt to block them completely.
If you have all of your identifying characteristics off then we (or Cloudflare, which we use as our first line of defense and our front-line cache) will likely block you at least some of the time. And likely other sites too.

Bots are a scourge right now. AI has made it far too easy for any "vibe coder" to spin up a bot network to scrape sites like ours that are data-heavy.

>14 conceptDawg: No worries. This site hasn't blocked me. My earlier comments on that note were about the wider net.

Aside from the text size/contrast (and the "remind me what language" pop up), I've had no technical or access problems here. I haven't found all the features yet, there seems to be a vast wealth of them, but I think I've found all I need, and it seems to be working for me just great.

>15 WonkyBloke: We already have the Large Text style, so are you saying that isn't big enough for you?

>16 conceptDawg: I think even "System Large" might be fine once dark mode becomes available. With so much white background, and some of the text being in blue, it's not solely the size of the lettering, but their contrast/clarity against the glare of the background. As I look at the page right now, the reply I am typing is fine. as it's slightly bolder. If all text on the site was like this, I would probably not have started this talk,as it's what I'd expect to see on most sites, although Dark Mode would still be an improvement from my perspective. The body text in the posts above it have less contrast and are more difficult to read, and the blue text is particularly difficult to see. Obviously the difficulty increases significantly in areas where the text is smaller still (Your Books) where the personalisations don't apply particularly when the text is blue. I hope that helps.

Ah. Interesting. We are using standard weight for all of our text—web standard. But a dark mode is coming soon(ish). The Your Books view of your catalog will probably be an outlier as far as font-sizing/styling goes, for a while. It's a strange amalgam of old and new code and it's in a spreadsheet form that makes it very hard to make accessible without angering a large swath of members.
But every other page on the site should be good to go when we release it.

Thanks for your help. I look forward to Dark Mode's arrival, and fully appreciate that these things take time to facilitate, and get working smoothly. Please do continue to investigate ways of making the Your Books and Add Books sections more accessible for those of us that need it, even if the row height increases due to text wrapping etc. Even if that means a secondary setting for those areas, so there's a static content theme and a database theme, it will help. Of course, I'm not suggesting it should all look differently for everyone, just that some folks might need to make a few personal tweaks to get the most from the site.

Thanks again.

>19 WonkyBloke: Definitely taking your feedback into our considerations. All of our LT2 work has been trying to incorporate more accessibility concerns into the design. We're not "there" yet, but we are a LOT closer than LT1, which has basically ZERO accessibility provisions.
It's a process, and we're committed to it.

>20 conceptDawg: Good to hear. Thank you.

Is there going to be a 'no dark mode' option for those of us who read dark on light well, but struggle with light on dark? It would be so nice to be able to read the headers again.

>22 MarthaJeanne: Not at first. But I won't discount anything for the future.