On Thu, 2007-10-11 at 16:37 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > > The Thursday 2007-10-11 at 10:12 +0100, Dave Howorth wrote: > > > a11y (not ally) is geek-speak for accessibility, like i18n is geek-speak > > for internationalization. (Hint: count the letters :) > > I didn't know. IMO, a11y instead of accessibility is a non accesible > acronym, as the user with vision dificulties will probably not spot the > "ones" - that's what happened to the OP, I think. >:-) > That's correct. When he said "a11y (not ally)" I still only saw "L's" and wondered what the heck he was critiquing, then when Carlos said "ones" I realized the difference. :-) > > > Bigger monitors are better of course but there are limits, especially on > > laptops. And setting the virtual screen resolution larger than the > > physical screen resolution so that you can pan around to see different > > parts of the screen can be useful in some circumstances. But adjusting > > font size is usually the most important technique. > >
Bigger monitors, unfortunately, aren't always better. It was a long time before I gave in to 19" monitors from 17" monitors. One of the most common forms of blindness or visual impairment is Retintis Pigmentosa. You may know this more as "tunnel vision." This means we have a limited range of vision. In my case, I have less than 20 degrees of vision versus the normal 90 degrees of a normal sighted person. The larger the screen, the more I have to scan (move my head) to find things. As an example, one trick I use for finding my mouse pointer is to focus on the upper left corner of the screen and then keep dragging my mouse until the pointer comes into focus. Then I can follow my pointer to the location I want to use it. Years ago, back in Windows 3.1 days, there was an add-on that allowed me to quickly move my mouse pointer to the center of the screen by clicking a set of hotkeys. Never saw it again after Win95 came around. :-( Would be great if someone could create something like that again for Suse. :-) > > Carlos, you're correct that setting the screen to its full native > > resolution and then choosing appropriate font sizes is the way to get > > the best quality results. Sadly, it's a total pain in GNU/Linux. > It IS a pain. :-) I've been working at it for two days now. And if you have trouble seeing and have to go to so many places to adjust settings, that's a real problem. Then again, to give some praise, the level of flexibility is great. For example, I've created a second panel with all my favorite apps. I like that I can then explicitly change the background color of the panel to give some contrast between it and the icons. Resizing the panel also expands the size of the icons to a comportable level. Unfortunately, there appears to be no way to also increase the size of text in the panels. (Except of course, to switch to 800x600 resolution.) > Windows have a quick setting to choose large/small fonts. That would be > nice. My current display is 1024*768, but when using larger resolutions > the fonts display smaller, instead of the same size. A setting to make > them larger would be nice. > I'll admit that yes it is true, Windows does do a better job of overall display in 800x600. But since 800x600 seems to prevent functionality in some apps, I'm learning to stick with 1024x768 and find ways to customize in specific areas. But, like we're saying here, it IS a chore. :-) > > > What the user wants is a single 'knob' or 'slider' that increases the > > size of all the fonts on the screen smoothly. Assuming the apps/graphics > > designers made sensible choices for relative sizes with their good > > eyesight, everything should scale reasonably well. > > Not only the fonts, but everything, I think. Enlarge everything, like a > magnifying glass applied to all the screen. > Exactly. > > > Setting a lower screen resolution is a simple way of sidestepping all > > those problems and getting a usable display. But application and content > > designers are increasingly assuming higher minimum resolutions - often > > without any real need. They appear to think it's cool. > > True. > I get a bit overly emotional when that happens. It seems that it is happening more and more across the board (regardless of operating system) at a real expense to certain users. Evolution for example, you can't resize panels in 800x600. :-( I didn't have this problem in Suse Pro 9.3. Websites are also causing problems these days. Seems like everyone wants to go for the cool factor, which today is white background with grey fonts. More and more visually-impaired people are complaining about this. But I'm going off-point here a bit. > There are some apps that are difficult to run at "only" 1024*768, the > dialogs are bigger than available space, and they are simply clipped. Once > I could not even see the buttons at the bottom. > Again, referring to Evolution. I couldn't resize the panels once I switched to 800x600. Fortunately, email is not an everyday part of most people's lives. :-) I may have sounded a bit critical, and in some ways I am, but I also think there's an opportunity for real discussion. And I'd love to participate in anything that takes a closer look at this. Out of curiosity, if we get into discussion on this in more detail, am I allowed to attach screen captures for examples? Thanks for everyone's responses here. I'm actually quite heartened to see this much interest in this topic. Bryen > - -- > Cheers, > Carlos E. R. > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) > Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 > > iD4DBQFHDjUotTMYHG2NR9URAh8AAJ9bUTeOPE/rC95xyYqeXaaRRv9cOACYq/Ma > kIR53cdw8B9036pQImsstw== > =bW60 > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
