Small mobile text

Silktide loads each page on a simulated mobile device and reports text that is too small to comfortably read without zooming. Text must render at 11 pixels or larger on mobile to pass.

Why this matters

Text that is fine on a desktop monitor can be unreadably small on a phone. Visitors either squint, pinch-zoom and scroll sideways line by line, or give up - and people with low vision may not be able to read it at all. Small text concentrates in exactly the places designers stop looking: footers, photo captions, legal notices, and cookie banners.

This is especially common on sites designed desktop-first and adapted for mobile afterwards, where fixed font sizes shrink along with the layout.

How to fix it

Increase the font size of the flagged text so it renders at 11 pixels or more on mobile. For body text, aim higher - 16 pixels is a common baseline for comfortable mobile reading.
Prefer relative units (rem, em) in your over fixed pixel sizes, so text scales with the user's settings.
Where a design shrinks whole sections on small screens, use media queries to keep text at a readable size while the layout, not the type, adapts.

How Silktide tests this

Load the page on a simulated mobile device.
Examine every piece of visible text with at least a couple of letters or numbers. Hidden text, and text sized to zero for use only, is ignored.
Measure the rendered font size of each piece.
Report text that renders below 11 pixels.

Troubleshooting

Attribution text from embedded maps is ignored automatically. For other widgets you can enable the option to exclude third-party plugin content from this check, or record a on findings you accept.

The text is deliberately small

Fine print is still meant to be read - that is usually the argument for making it legible, not smaller. If you conclude specific text is acceptable, approve the finding.