26% of Android and iOS mobile device users increase the default font size, according to APPT data from February 2026. That is one in four people. WCAG 2.2 Success Criterion 1.4.4 requires text to scale up to 200% without loss of content or functionality, and it sits at AA compliance level, meaning it is legally mandatory in most jurisdictions. If your design breaks at double the base font size, you are not shipping a compliant product.
The article, published on Smashing Magazine, makes a case for AccessibilityOps: embedding accessibility into team workflows as a default process, not a feature toggle. The practical center of the piece is font scaling. Designers do not control how users interact with their interfaces. Assistive technologies, screen readers, contrast overrides, and font size settings transform the rendered output. Blocking those technologies to protect a visual design is the wrong call. The right call is designing for the transformation.
The full piece walks through how to test font scaling using Figma Variables, which is where the real technical payoff lives. The methodology lets designers simulate scaling scenarios at 120%, 140%, and 200% inside the design tool before a single line of code is written. That process, and the specific Figma setup behind it, is what makes this worth reading in full.
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