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On Mon, 10/17/16, Steve Litt <slitt@???> wrote:
Subject: Re: [DNG] Refracta on Distrowatch
To: dng@???
Date: Monday, October 17, 2016, 7:14 PM
>
> A COUPLE OTHER REFRACTA SUGGESTIONS
>
> The Refracta I installed on the laptop was very hostile to those with
> bad vision. It had this garish mostly orange and some black background
> that camouflaged any desktop icons and even terminals. The terminals
> were set to some low contrast thing like #aaaaaa on #000000, with small
> fonts, and transparency. Imagine how hard it was to read anything when
> the garish background obscured the tiny, low contrast writing on the
> terminal.
>
> Pretty is nice, but pretty is a luxury for the well-sighted. Those of
> us with lousy vision hugely prioritize legibility, which is usually a
> direct tradeoff with pretty. There are times I can't read pretty enough
> to configure it to legibility.
>
> So I'd suggest a second theme for Refracta, either selectible at boot,
> or runnable by a click on the top left desktop icon (remember, the user
> might not be seeing the icon clearly enough to read it). The legibility
> theme should feature:
>
> * No background image. Just a straight #006600 color, no gradient.
>
> * Terminal coloration either #000000 on #ffffff or #ffffff on #000000.
> Yeah, that gives some people headaches, but those of us with bad
> vision can't even use the less contrasty stuff.
>
> * Big font for the terminals. Big enough that an 80x25 terminal
> emulator should occupy considerably more than 1/4 of the monitor
> area. Consider bold fonts. Ugly, but more readable to the
> less-sighted.
>
> * No friggin transparency!!!!!
>
> * Window border width of 2px instead of 1px, colored very noticibly,
> especially for the active window (I use #00cccc for the active window
> border and #666666 for the inactive window border). No silly
> gradients on the titlebar: legibility for the poorly sighted demands
> a solid block recognizeable as such.
>
> * Window title bar font big, similar to what I described for the
> terminal emulator font, and very contrasty with the window title bar
> background color.
>
> * Active window's titlebar *VERY* noticible at a moment's glance. My
> active titlebar has a background of #DD0000 and foreground #CCffff.
> I'm not color blind, but if I were, I might prefer something like
> #000000 on #FF6666. Ugly to most of us, but to a poorly-sighted
> colorblind person this would be a saving grace.
>
> As you read this, it will sound horribly ugly to you, but please
> remember it will be used by very few. Most people will use the standard
> theme. The only purpose of this alternate theme is to help those whose
> vision is so bad they can't afford pretty. And please remember, unless
> this alternate theme is either default or dead-bang easy and intuitive
> to get to, the poorly sighted person will not have the visual acuity to
> navigate the standard theme enough to make their computer legible.
>
> Thanks,
>
> SteveT
>
Here's a suggestion . . .
Why don't you roll your own low vision-friendly Refracta! That would be so easy to do with refractasnapshot after you've made the appropriate changes and way more efficient than us trying to figure out what would and wouldn't work. Don't know if fsr has room to host it himself but he could surely provide prominent links to it on the Refracta website, forum and sourceforge.
Cheers!
golinux
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Re: [DNG] Refracta on Distrowatch
