OS X has some fine accessibility features. For example, the ability to zoom in by holding down the control key and scrolling with the mouse is excellent. What it lacks is any way to increase the operating system’s text size.

Sure, you can alter the size of icons and text on the desktop. That is all. If you’ve got, for example, poor eyesight and you want to find an item in the menu bar? Too bad. Need to sort out some files in a Finder window? Too bad. Want to configure some preferences in an application? Too bad. It is interesting that in the Universal Access dialog, the place where one can adjust various accessibility feature, the text is larger than normal. This is the only place in OS X with larger, easier-to-read text.

A visit to the Apple support discussion board makes it look like the only option is to decrease the screen resolution, thereby rendering everything larger and blurrier and removing any advantage one may get from having a screen capable of a high resolution. Alternatively, you can use the zoom functionality. That option decreases clarity slightly, but it introduces the inability to see all of the screen at one time without moving the mouse.

It is a completely valid philosophy to reduce usability problems by reducing complexity. After all, a user could easily get him or herself into trouble tweaking the UI. On the other hand, though, this is not a purely cosmetic issue. A user may need to be able to modify the size of text in OS X (and perhaps other aspects of the appearance).