What it is
This check looks specifically at whether a page's viewport meta tag includes settings that disable zooming — most commonly user-scalable=no or maximum-scale=1 added to the same tag that's otherwise required for mobile responsiveness. These additions were sometimes used in the past to prevent an accidental double-tap from zooming in unexpectedly, but they have a serious, unintended side effect: they block zooming entirely, even when a visitor deliberately wants to pinch-zoom in.
This is distinct from simply having no viewport tag at all (which causes a different, purely visual problem covered in our other viewport guides) — this specifically covers a viewport tag that's present but has been configured to actively prevent zooming.
Why it matters
Many low-vision visitors rely on pinch-to-zoom as their normal way of reading any web content comfortably, adjusting the zoom level to whatever size works for their own vision on a given page. Blocking that ability doesn't just create an inconvenience — for someone who genuinely needs it, it can make a page's content completely unreadable, full stop, regardless of how well-designed the rest of the page is.
This is explicitly called out in WCAG (the standard web accessibility guidelines), which require that zoom not be disabled specifically because of how directly it affects people with low vision — it's considered one of the more serious, avoidable accessibility failures precisely because it takes away a capability the browser itself already provides by default.
How to fix it
- Check your page's viewport meta tag for
user-scalable=noor amaximum-scalevalue of1or lower. - Remove both of those specific parts if present, keeping the rest of the tag (
width=device-width, initial-scale=1) intact. - If the original goal was preventing an accidental double-tap zoom on a specific interactive element, address that with more targeted styling on that element instead of disabling zoom for the entire page.
- If you're using a website builder, this is rarely something the platform sets by default — check any custom code snippets you've added to the page's
<head>section. - Test on an actual phone afterward by trying to pinch-zoom on the page to confirm it now responds normally.