This is actually a really good question as it gets into an interesting 
tension between responsiveness and accessibility. Zooming is often a 
useful means of addressing visual access issues, and one cannot presume 
that a user will have external or in-browser apps for magnification.

There is some literature on defining media queries using em/rem units 
instead of pixels, which would address some of the issues.
http://blog.cloudfour.com/the-ems-have-it-proportional-media-queries-ftw/
https://css-tricks.com/zooming-squishes/

I can't say for certain about this, however, as I haven't tested it yet. 
I have now added zooming vs responsiveness to my testing criteria.


Kate Deibel, PhD | Web Applications Specialist
Information Technology Services
University of Washington Libraries
http://staff.washington.edu/deibel

--

"When Thor shows up, it's always deus ex machina."

On 2/5/2016 10:40 AM, Kyle Breneman wrote:
> Happy Friday, everybody!
>
> Our library recently got a shiny new, responsive-esque website.
> <http://langsdale.ubalt.edu>  The reference librarians frequently zoom in
> on our homepage during class instruction, and have noticed that after they
> zoom in a bit, our homepage switches from desktop to the mobile layout.
>
> Is there any easy way around this?  In other words, is it possible to fix
> the site so that, if a user is on a desktop/laptop, zooming in on the
> homepage will *not* flip the user over to the mobile layout?
>
> Thanks for your help!
>
> Kyle
>