meta-viewport rule shouldn't be critical any more

[goodwitch]

Product

axe-core

Product Version

No response

Latest Version

• I have tested the issue with the latest version of the product

Issue Description

Expectation

axe-core should not call issues found by meta-viewport as critical

Actual

axe-core is calling issues found by meta-viewport as critical

How to Reproduce

1. Go to https://status.deque.com/
2. Run axe DevTools browser extension "full page scan"
3. You should get 1 issue: "Zooming and scaling must not be disabled"
4. While it is accurate that old mobile browsers respected "maximum-scale" settings like the one found this page ( ) Modern mobile browsers do NOT respect this.
5. Even the ACT Rule for "Meta viewport allows for zoom" states this under the "Accessibility Supports" h2: "Desktop browsers ignore the viewport meta element, and most modern mobile browsers either ignore it by default or have an accessibility option which will allow zooming. This rule is not relevant for desktop browsers, nor for most modern mobile browsers. Only users with older mobile browsers can experience issues tested by this rule."

Additional context

Please drop the impact level of this issue to Moderate.

[WilcoFiers]

Thank you for raising this issue. I agree with you that the impact should be changed to moderate, but not for the reason you're giving. I'm just going to leave some documentation on this for future reference.

While it is accurate that old mobile browsers respected "maximum-scale" settings like the one found this page ( ) Modern mobile browsers do NOT respect this.

That does not seem to be true. I'm running Chrome 133 (current) on Android and in its default setting it does not let me zoom on that status page. I need to go to the accessibility settings and turn that override option on to allow magnification. Same is true for Samsung Internet. In ACT we had a conversation last year about whether this rule should be deprecated. The conclusion we came to there is that there is nothing in this success criterion that suggests this can be met through an accessibility setting. Some WCAG criteria can be passed through an accessibility setting of if assistive technologies can do something, that's not true here. The default has to allow scaling, and currently the default on several mobile browsers is still to prevent scaling if that property is set, thus failing WCAG if used.

As for the impact, how many people are effected by the problem doesn't change how we determine the impact. What does matter is how easy / difficult it is to get around an issue. That's something I don't think we considered carefully enough with this rule. That override is available in all mobile browsers axe-core supports, and you only have to turn it on once. Lowering the impact for an issue that has a relatively easy work-around is appropriate.