"Effing Unreadable" Award

I am forced to inaugurate a new award for illegible web sites, after two Washington State media sources adopt micro-fonts.

Criteria for the "Effing Unreadable" are ...

1) screen fonts of 10 point or less
2) fonts won't resize in the client browser (The first 2 winners won't resize in IE 6.x)
3) client reading glasses don't ease the pain of trying to read what the web site has posted in micro-font.

If you're over 40 with declining vision (requiring reading glasses, or other assist), these web sites are not "user friendly".

The first winners are The Stranger.com and the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. There is little satisfaction knowing these two organizations are politically polarized, since they have both decided to put a "Go Away!" sign on their web sites, to an aging populace that needs reading glasses to function. Both the "progressive" and "conservative" ends of the political spectrum have decided to disrespect a whole new demographic - the visually declining. The market place means little to these folk.

I guess that's why I've become Libertarian in my latter days (now 48, and counting).

See award photos in the messages below ...

[ Update: a reader directed me to an IE 6.x setting - Go to Tools, Internet Options, click Accessibility button, check mark "Ignore fonts sizes specified on Web pages". Now you should be able to fiddle with font sizes in the browser. But the layout may become very strange regarding alignments. My awards still stand since the vendors force a default micro-font that makes me dig deep into settings so I can read their great wisdom. A pox on their design defaults. ]

###