[Dean C]

Originally Posted by Skipsoutdoors

We have a lot of older members with short arm disease. The larger bolder font is easier for them to read.

99.99% of the return visitors enter at a forum level, I've thought of eliminating the home page altogether. We have a high rate of return visitors. Many have been on the forums for 4 or 5 years.

Skip

If a user has problems reading fonts on the web, they should increase their global font-size, not have you increase the font-size for ALL users who use your website.

Now, to answer your question. I think part of it is how competitive the advertising market has got over the last couple of years. Advertisers are willing to pay less, users are becoming more adverse to advertising that isn't relevant to them.

I have to be honest too, as a user who has just come to your site, if I had an interest in outdoor sports, i'd close it almost straight away. The design is horrificly bad. Light text on dark backgrounds is much harder to read on the web, and on top of that you have these horribly big fonts. Yes, you may have to cater for disabled users, but accessibility can be provided by using ems for font-sizes, and then the user can increase their browser font-size and enjoy a pleasurable experience across all their sites, and not have EXTRA big font sizes on yours.

A good accessible, usable design will make your advertising seem less intrusive, and users will click on your ads more as they won't stick out like a sore thumb.