Why you must not disable zoom on mobile
user-scalable=no stops people with low vision from enlarging the page. It is a WCAG failure; iOS Safari ignores it, but Android browsers do not.
Step by step, with screenshots: European Accessibility Act: what small sites must do →
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What it is
Disabling zoom means a viewport meta tag stops visitors from pinch-zooming a page on their phone, usually with user-scalable=no or maximum-scale=1 in <meta name="viewport">. Sites often add it to stop form fields zooming in or to make a page feel like an app.
Many people rely on zoom to read small text, check a product photo or hit a small link, and for people with low vision it is essential. WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.4.4 (Resize Text) requires that text can be enlarged to 200 %. Safari on iPhone ignores these settings, but Chrome on Android honours them. getReport fails the check when the viewport tag turns zoom off. A page is OK with <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">.
What a passing site looks like
- Visitors can zoom the page on their phonefail · −4 ptseffort S
Visitors cannot zoom the page on their phone
Why it matters. Many people zoom web pages on their phone to read small text. A viewport tag with user-scalable=no or a low maximum-scale turns that off in Chrome on Android; only iOS Safari ignores it.
- Change the viewport meta tag to <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">.
- Remove user-scalable=no, and remove maximum-scale or set it to 5 or more; in WordPress this usually lives in the theme header or a mobile plugin.
Questions people ask
What does user-scalable=no do?
It tells mobile browsers not to let visitors zoom the page with a pinch. Chrome and other Android browsers obey it, while Safari on iOS has ignored it since iOS 10 for accessibility reasons. Either way it fails WCAG and frustrates anyone trying to read small print, so remove it from the viewport meta tag.
Is maximum-scale=1 bad for accessibility?
Yes. maximum-scale=1 limits zoom to the default size, which blocks zooming just like user-scalable=no. axe-core flags any maximum-scale below 2, since WCAG requires text to scale to 200 %. If you added it to stop iPhones zooming into form fields, give inputs a font size of at least 16 px instead, which prevents that automatic zoom.
What viewport meta tag should I use?
Use <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">. It makes the page as wide as the screen and starts at 100 % zoom while leaving pinch-zoom available. Leave out user-scalable, maximum-scale and minimum-scale unless you have a specific reason, and never set user-scalable=no or a maximum-scale below 2.