Stopping visitors zooming: Crawl Audit check 102

Short answer: some sites add user-scalable=no or maximum-scale=1 to their viewport tag so the layout never zooms. That stops people with low vision from pinching to enlarge the text. Check 102 fails when either is present. Remove them.

What Crawl Audit checks

• Fail: the viewport tag contains user-scalable=no or maximum-scale=1.
• Pass: neither.

Crawl Audit is gentler than the other tools. Lighthouse flags any maximum-scale below 5, and the W3C's test rule flags anything below 2.

What the sources say

• WCAG 1.4.4 Resize Text (level AA): text "can be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality."
• MDN: "WCAG requires a minimum of 2× scaling; however, the best practice is to enable a 5× zoom."
• Lighthouse, which still runs this check in version 13: "Disabling zooming is problematic for users with low vision who rely on screen magnification to properly see the contents of a web page."
• web.dev: "We don't recommend using these attributes because they can prevent the user from zooming the viewport, potentially causing accessibility issues."

iPhones have ignored user-scalable=no by default since iOS 10, but other browsers still obey it, so the setting still shuts some people out.

How to fix it

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

• Next.js: the default viewport is fine. Don't copy the docs example that sets maximumScale: 1 and userScalable: false.
• WordPress and Shopify: look in the theme's header template for the viewport tag.

Sources

• W3C, Understanding 1.4.4 Resize Text and Meta viewport allows for zoom, checked 6 October 2026.
• MDN, <meta name="viewport">; web.dev, Responsive web design basics.