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Disabled users tend to customise a lot. Because no matter how well-intentioned the accessibility options may be. Most are actually unusable in real world situations.
Generally because developers are rarely disabled in the way being supported. And seem to assume full or 0 use. Never recognising we depend more on our limited abilities to see, hear or move than most able-bodied do. So options that try to replace 100% slow us down rather than making things easier. So we are forced to spend time trying to adapt colours fonts and sounds in ways they never consider. Just to be able to compete in any form of work.
I think that part of the issue is that every disability is unique to some degree. No two people who are blind have blindness to the same degree. Colorblind people have several variations they could be experiencing. Deafness also follows a similar pattern, whereby some people can’t hear well where others can’t hear at all; or in some cases have a constant sound in their ear that drowns out everything else. There are neurological disorders that range from not being able to read sentences normally because the words start to become jumbled to being unable to focus on large amounts of text. There are physical disabilities of all sorts that affect the arms and hands or even the ability to sit upright to look at the computer screen.
Because of that, there are two options:
build a desktop environment custom-tailored to each individuals needs.
build some general purpose accessibility options that can (and must) be adjusted to meet an individuals needs, which may or may not be able to meet them 100%.
Out of the two, the second one is far more feasible, and more possible to improve upon.
The issue is how much stuff seems to just say. Let’s not bother at all. I will not the worst OS software for this has commercial names attached to it. Even when OS if some big company is responsible for funding. It’s down to the community to fight to get any decent support as a default. Capitalism really dose not want to care about disabled users unless forced. Or medical level profits are attached. But lets ;leave that mess out for now.
Am disabled, though thankfully i mostly only need magnification and swapping colors around. Still, it’s me fiddling with UI element sizes, fonts, and colors to get a baseline i can live with so I only have to use zoom now and again as opposed to constantly.
Compare and contrast with how Windows has handled things since windows 8 in that theirs is a global percentage based scaling of EVERYTHING.
For that reason alone I’ve been pro-linux for the past decade. That I can game on linux? Means i have no want or reason to go backto windows. Is it perfect? Nope! There are always hiccups in everything. Yet it does most of what i want without complaint.
Grins Been non windows at home since the 90s. Lost my vision and mobility in the early 2000s. So really have not tried to use windows since.
But yeah I have 3 32-inch monitors, tend to have the magnifier on the alt key with the mouse to zoom. But only use it for setting up new software of the odd gnome menu stuff.
But every now and then you get some software that just refuses to follow the gui text hints and fails to give users any options. OS is way better than proprietary. But many developers just do not realise how little accessibility in the OS actually helps with workflow when they do not allow text customisation.
And what the F%$^ is it with pale grey on white text lately why the hell does anyone want that. Low contrast text and backgrounds seems to be a very annoying trend over the last 10 years.
I don’t have vision problems and I hate the low contrast text being shoved into everything. I’ve no idea how frustrating it must be if you have sight issues, but I can imagine.
Disabled users tend to customise a lot. Because no matter how well-intentioned the accessibility options may be. Most are actually unusable in real world situations.
Generally because developers are rarely disabled in the way being supported. And seem to assume full or 0 use. Never recognising we depend more on our limited abilities to see, hear or move than most able-bodied do. So options that try to replace 100% slow us down rather than making things easier. So we are forced to spend time trying to adapt colours fonts and sounds in ways they never consider. Just to be able to compete in any form of work.
I think that part of the issue is that every disability is unique to some degree. No two people who are blind have blindness to the same degree. Colorblind people have several variations they could be experiencing. Deafness also follows a similar pattern, whereby some people can’t hear well where others can’t hear at all; or in some cases have a constant sound in their ear that drowns out everything else. There are neurological disorders that range from not being able to read sentences normally because the words start to become jumbled to being unable to focus on large amounts of text. There are physical disabilities of all sorts that affect the arms and hands or even the ability to sit upright to look at the computer screen.
Because of that, there are two options:
build a desktop environment custom-tailored to each individuals needs.
build some general purpose accessibility options that can (and must) be adjusted to meet an individuals needs, which may or may not be able to meet them 100%.
Out of the two, the second one is far more feasible, and more possible to improve upon.
Well put. But yep, that pretty much somes it up.
The issue is how much stuff seems to just say. Let’s not bother at all. I will not the worst OS software for this has commercial names attached to it. Even when OS if some big company is responsible for funding. It’s down to the community to fight to get any decent support as a default. Capitalism really dose not want to care about disabled users unless forced. Or medical level profits are attached. But lets ;leave that mess out for now.
Am disabled, though thankfully i mostly only need magnification and swapping colors around. Still, it’s me fiddling with UI element sizes, fonts, and colors to get a baseline i can live with so I only have to use zoom now and again as opposed to constantly.
Compare and contrast with how Windows has handled things since windows 8 in that theirs is a global percentage based scaling of EVERYTHING.
For that reason alone I’ve been pro-linux for the past decade. That I can game on linux? Means i have no want or reason to go backto windows. Is it perfect? Nope! There are always hiccups in everything. Yet it does most of what i want without complaint.
Grins Been non windows at home since the 90s. Lost my vision and mobility in the early 2000s. So really have not tried to use windows since.
But yeah I have 3 32-inch monitors, tend to have the magnifier on the alt key with the mouse to zoom. But only use it for setting up new software of the odd gnome menu stuff.
But every now and then you get some software that just refuses to follow the gui text hints and fails to give users any options. OS is way better than proprietary. But many developers just do not realise how little accessibility in the OS actually helps with workflow when they do not allow text customisation.
And what the F%$^ is it with pale grey on white text lately why the hell does anyone want that. Low contrast text and backgrounds seems to be a very annoying trend over the last 10 years.
I don’t have vision problems and I hate the low contrast text being shoved into everything. I’ve no idea how frustrating it must be if you have sight issues, but I can imagine.
Yep no one seems to like it. Yet it keeps getting implemented.
My current conspiracy. It my brothers guide dog controlling the world so she has a job.