What we are building
A denture clinic site that a seventy-five year old can use alone, on their own phone, with their own text settings, without asking anyone for help. That is a build specification, not a sentiment, and it can be worked through in order.
This is the sequence we use on a clinical dental technician and denture clinic site. It takes a day the first time and then costs nothing to maintain.
1. Decide the base size before anything else
Start from a base body size that is generous rather than fashionable, and build the rest of the scale from it. Everything after this step is easier if the starting point is right, and everything is harder if the design was drawn at a small size and enlarged later.
Set a maximum line length so that lines stay short as the type grows. Long lines at large sizes are the hardest thing on the web to read.
2. Set every size in relative units
Type, spacing, padding, container widths and media queries all in relative units, so that a patient who raises their browser or system text size scales the whole layout rather than one paragraph. Fixed pixel sizing is the single reason a site ignores the setting a patient has already chosen.
The same applies to line height and to the space between elements, which needs to grow with the text or the page becomes a solid block at large sizes.
3. Fix contrast next
Dark text on a light ground, at a contrast ratio that comfortably clears the usual accessibility guidance rather than scraping it. Check the colours you are least confident about: grey body copy, placeholder text in forms, small print under prices, white text on a brand colour, and any text sitting over a photograph.
Where text has to sit on an image, put a solid panel behind it rather than trusting an overlay.
4. Give the layout room to grow
Test at increasing text sizes and fix what breaks. The usual failures are predictable: the header collapsing, a button label spilling past its edges, two columns colliding, a fixed height container that clips its content, and a sticky bar that swallows half the screen once its type grows.
Build components that wrap rather than truncate. Anything with a fixed height is a future failure.
5. Make the tap targets forgiving
Buttons and links need to be large, with clear space around them, and never packed into a tight row. An unsteady hand mis-taps small targets, and a mis-tap on a phone is where a patient gives up and closes the page.
Give links a visible underline as well as a colour, so they do not depend on colour vision, and give every interactive element a clearly visible focus outline.
6. Get the text out of the images
Prices, opening hours, phone numbers and any offer must be real text. Text inside an image cannot be scaled, read aloud or found in search. Where a photograph carries information, repeat that information in text near it.
Write alt text for every meaningful image and leave decorative images with empty alt so they are skipped.
7. Simplify the navigation
Five or six items, plainly named, with fees and repairs among them. Every additional item costs more than it does on a general site, because the menu is where a patient with a small screen and large text has the least room.
Put the phone number in the header on every page, as a tappable link, in real text, at the same visual weight as the booking button. Nobody should be forced into a form.
8. Make the forms survivable
Labels above fields, always visible, never placeholder-only. Big input boxes. Errors described in words next to the field they belong to. As few fields as the job needs.
Keep health details out of website forms entirely: anything clinical belongs in your practice system's own intake, which is built for it.
9. Check the third-party widgets
This is the step that catches people out. Your own pages may be perfect while the embedded booking widget, the review carousel and the cookie banner ignore text settings completely.
Open the booking flow itself at a large text size on a real phone and go all the way through to a confirmation. If the widget cannot cope, ask the vendor about its accessibility settings, choose a full-page redirect instead of an inline embed, or make the phone route the primary one on that page and say so.
10. Test on a real handset, then on a real patient
Turn the system text size up on an actual phone, in daylight, and use the site one-handed. Then run the same pages through a keyboard only, and listen to one page with the phone's screen reader turned on to confirm the headings make sense in order.
Then hand the phone to a patient in the waiting room who is willing to try, and watch without helping. Everything you learn in that minute is worth more than a lab score.
11. Keep it from drifting
Add the large-text pass to whatever you check after every content update, because a new page, a new banner or a new embed is where regressions arrive. Twice a year, walk the whole site at a large setting again.
Where this sits
Readable at large text sizes is the first of the six things a denture clinic site must do, and we treat it as a build requirement rather than a finishing touch, alongside the price records and the same-day repair page. The same care runs through the wider dental practice websites we make, and the packages that include this work are on pricing. Build for the eyes that will use it, and the patient books without needing a relative to help.