Interestingly the browser defaults have changed over time.
When we used to use 640x480 and 800x600 monitors, the browser defaults - for something like a h1 took up most of the screen. That's half the reason designers (before the advent of CSS) didn't use semantic markup. They'd just use bold to mark up a heading at the body text size. We had pixel images used for text in navigation at 10px. With something like 12px for body text (and tables for layouts.)
There were also radical inconsistencies between the browsers, with their text size rendering defaults.
I'm also pretty sure that the 16px default font size was a late edition. Either way a bit of history would help the article.
Plus, as many have pointed out, the fact that 16px appears differently depending on screen resolution, distance from the display is an important point that should have been stated.
The article may have been better arguing that making a website more readable is better for users and sustained readership.
When we used to use 640x480 and 800x600 monitors, the browser defaults - for something like a h1 took up most of the screen. That's half the reason designers (before the advent of CSS) didn't use semantic markup. They'd just use bold to mark up a heading at the body text size. We had pixel images used for text in navigation at 10px. With something like 12px for body text (and tables for layouts.)
There were also radical inconsistencies between the browsers, with their text size rendering defaults.
I'm also pretty sure that the 16px default font size was a late edition. Either way a bit of history would help the article.
Plus, as many have pointed out, the fact that 16px appears differently depending on screen resolution, distance from the display is an important point that should have been stated.
The article may have been better arguing that making a website more readable is better for users and sustained readership.