Accessibility critic says Tangled's redesign fails basic standards
A developer flags 12px font size and text-scaling failures in the GitHub alternative's new UI, citing WCAG violations.
What to know
- Tangled's new redesign uses a 12px base font size in pixel units, violating WCAG 2.2 accessibility standards and preventing users from resizing text without loss of content.
- The critique hinges on accountability: Bushell argues that VC-backed projects should hire accessibility experts and meet basic standards, not personal projects.
- Debate split between those who see obvious negligence in a well-funded startup and those who question whether public critique is appropriate vs. private issue filing.
- The underlying issue is technical: Tangled's fixed 16px HTML base blocks relative CSS units from respecting browser accessibility settings that other sites honor.
The dispute Whether accessibility standards (especially text resizing) should be mandatory for well-funded projects, or whether user zoom is a sufficient workaround that trades off against information density preferences. · positions read across 13 posts and comments
VC-backed projects must meet accessibility standards; public critique is warranted given Tangled's funding and position as a GitHub alternative.
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“My criticism is proportional to the size of their investment, if it was a personal project I wouldn't make such a post.”
dbushell · Lobsters ↗
A public blog post framing is meanspirited; the issue should have been filed privately in Tangled's repo first.
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“This seems surprisingly meanspirited for a blog post about a single issue - doesn't Tangled have a repo somewhere where this could be posted as an issue/bug, rather than as a whole rant?”
Johz · Lobsters ↗
Larger font sizes damage usability by reducing information density; smaller fonts are preferable and user zoom is adequate.
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“I, for one, am in favor of being able to see more text on screen. Many sites and blogs have way too large of a font size which means you cannot see the context for what you are reading.”
Forty-Bot · Lobsters ↗
David Bushell Web developer and accessibility criticTangled GitHub alternative code forge
How it unfolded 5 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump postscomments
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5
Technical debate emerges over relative vs. pixel units and browser settings
Commenters clarified that if Tangled used relative units (like Lobsters does), browser accessibility settings for font size would be respected. The root issue is Tangled's fixed 16px base on the HTML element, which blocks relative units from scaling with user preferences. One commenter noted the contrast with older design practices: a 12px base font is now considered fundamentally indefensible.
“A base font size of 12px in this decade truly is beyond the pale. It doesn't so much *call into question* their competence as much as *utterly disprove* it.”
— chrismorgan -
The point is that if the website uses relative units (which Lobsters does, and Tangled doesn't), it follows your preferences. In Firefox you can decrease the font size in the accessibility settings to your liking and Lobsters will respect that.
2 more of the top 3 · 6 posts in this stretch
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> Tangled is practically unusable for me at this size. It was small before but I could zoom in. The way the new front-end is designed and built doesn’t leave much room for personal remedy. I believe the old frontend was mostly plain HTML with HTMX for reactivity. Now it's Svelte and it feels universally worse: the DOM abruptly rebuilds itself…
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I, for one, am in favor of being able to see more text on screen. Many sites and blogs have way too large of a font size which means you cannot see the context for what you are reading. This makes it difficult to find the part of the text you actually want to read. Lobsters, for example, used to have a good font size but now I have to view it…
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Bushell details accessibility failures in Tangled's redesigned UI
David Bushell published a blog post analyzing Tangled's new Svelte-based interface, identifying a 12px font size coded in pixel units that blocks browser-level text resizing and violates WCAG 2.2 guidelines. He noted that forcing 200% zoom causes text clipping and character truncation, and that the design leaves "not much room for personal remedy."
“12 pixels is too small for any meaningful text (which is typically all text). Maybe you feel the size is totally fine? That's fine for you. But it's not fine for a significant number of people.”
— David Bushell -
well in my case I do mean *everyone*, including people under 40 :) eyesight deteriorates with age but not everyone starts from the same place. Conditions can be non-permanent and situational too. Same applies for all factors affecting accessibility.
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Community voices echo concern about VC-backed project standards
Commenters on Lobsters aligned with Bushell's framing, arguing that once a project takes VC funding and shifts to "grow at all costs" ambitions, accountability for basic standards like accessibility increases proportionally.
“once you take millions of dollars to turn a community project into a VC backed "grow at all costs" one, the amount of grace afforded is not the same.”
— ejri -
Agreed, once you take millions of dollars to turn a community project into a VC backed "grow at all costs" one, the amount of grace afforded is not the same.
2 more of the top 3 · 3 posts in this stretch
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A base font size of 12px in this decade truly is beyond the pale. It doesn’t so much *call into question* their competence as much as *utterly disprove* it. (I think I probably last saw such a preposterous base size on a new site about ten years ago, and HN is the only commercial site I can think of off the top of my head still around.) Sure, you…
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And by “accessibility” in this case you just mean “usable by people over 40”. I saw a similar situation arise in a well-funded mobile app targeting an older audience — literally the older you are, the more you likely need to do in the app. The designers made the whole thing use tiny dark grey text on light grey. (With tons of whitespace, of…
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Bushell defends critique proportional to Tangled's VC investment
In response to suggestions he posted a "rant" instead of filing an issue, Bushell argued his criticism is proportional to Tangled's funding scale. He emphasized that accessibility should be taken seriously by well-funded projects and that "quite a few obvious issues at a glance" would have been caught with expert review.
“My criticism is proportional to the size of their investment, if it was a personal project I wouldn't make such a post.”
— David Bushell -
It's not a rant at all. Maybe my frustration is showing because accessibility is not taken seriously on projects where it really should be. My criticism is proportional to the size of their investment, if it was a personal project I wouldn't make such a post. I only highlight a single issue, there are many, and quite a few obvious issues at a…
1 more of the top 2 · 2 posts in this stretch
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Please note the correction. The issue is still there but I pointed to the wrong cause initially.
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Some critics question Bushell's choice to publish critique publicly
A commenter questioned whether a public blog post about a single issue was appropriate, suggesting Bushell should have filed a bug report in Tangled's repository instead of framing it as a "rant."
“This seems surprisingly meanspirited for a blog post about a single issue - doesn't Tangled have a repo somewhere where this could be posted as an issue/bug, rather than as a whole rant?”
— Johz -
This seems surprisingly meanspirited for a blog post about a single issue - doesn't Tangled have a repo somewhere where this could be posted as an issue/bug, rather than as a whole rant?
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What people are saying 3 voices from 1 site · best of 13 · verbatim
- Why did Tangled's team not catch or prioritize these accessibility issues before redesigning in Svelte?
- Does switching from HTMX/HTML to a modern SPA framework inherently introduce accessibility regression, or was this a specific implementation choice?
- Nov 2
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It’s also impossible to use without JS now, one can’t even log in.
- Nov 1
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The font size is correct on unstyled websites. Why should I make them too small just so lobsters is a reasonable size?
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Of course! I didn’t mean “just” that way — I meant font size is such a low bar for accessibility. It’s sad and annoying when designers ignore even blatantly obvious accessibility issues that don’t affect them personally. But you know everyone who breaks their ankle becomes a sudden fan of the ADA. :)