A wallpaper to facilitate accessibility for people with visual disabilities
gnulinux23c .
talgomaxconlinux at gmail.com
Thu Jan 30 21:13:13 CET 2020
Hello:
My name is VĂctor.
I would like to share with you my first suggestion in the world of Free
Software. By the way, I don't know if I am sending this mail to the person
responsible for selecting the wallpapers that are included in each new
version.
My proposal is a wallpaper to improve universal accessibility in XFCE,
similar to the way we see a sign on the doors of a city bus, accessible to
everyone. Is this possible? Yes, it is.
I am a visually impaired person, I use GNU/Linux since 2007 and I consider
myself a standard user. Over the years I have tried out various graphical
environments on GNU/Linux, without going into an assessment of which is the
best. Perhaps, by a succession of coincidences, I discovered the enormous
accessibility of Gnome2.x, one of the most outstanding so far. Ubuntu was
accessible - or almost - by default for people with visual difficulties:
Ubuntu is linux for humans. On the other hand, my objective is far from
XFCE being the reference in accessibility in each one of the distros that
choose this graphic environment.
Allow me to make a parallelism about the universal accessibility that is
part of our daily life -and without being aware of it-. If we look at a
modern urban bus, it incorporates solutions to eliminate accessibility
barriers. Low floor, single level, wheelchair ramp for people with reduced
mobility, public address system for people with visual problems or
blindness, or screens with route information for people with hearing
problems. Perhaps this can be seen as an extra cost, but in reality it is a
series of enormous advantages that enhance the efficiency of the bus. They
are lower, weigh-less, save energy, get people on and off the bus up to 20%
faster, take less time to travel or improve the frequency of passage. It
also brings many other advantages, like traveling relaxedly to the
destination, thanks to the information on board, making the experience
better and more comfortable. The advantages are enormous and benefit all
people, including people with disabilities, making the bus a means of
transport with inclusive features.
Now comes the question: how to improve visual accessibility with a
wallpaper? You will probably be in front of an XFCE desktop, which has some
interesting features for people with visual impairments. Examples:
<Alt>+(scroll up/down) zoom in on the whole desktop.
<Super>F1 helps to find the mouse pointer.
What use are they if you don't have a visual difficulty?
On a popular video platform it is relatively - or it was - common to find
video tutorials where users use these features to draw attention to a
particular area of the desktop. Obviously, the work of editing is less or
none being the result better or more attractive although in principle was
not thought for that purpose. These two features make the difference
between being able to access a desktop or not when we are talking about
people with visual difficulties (yes, you can also change the size of the
fonts for larger ones. And it would be like changing your beautiful FullHD
resolution monitor for a 480p equivalent, I'm sure you'd like the
experience). Thanks to this desktop zoom feature, I usually use the font
size that comes by default in Xubuntu and enjoy FullHD with a 27" monitor.
XFCE has features that may not have been thought of as part of
accessibility but are indirectly effective, the problem is lack of
awareness for several reasons.
If you see my idea as an interesting improvement, when you decide to
release the next version you should add some reviews indicating these
features. Maybe in Xubuntu 20.04LTS, as it is a solution that does not
require programming.
Find attached several WALLPAPER Ideas or Sketches in LibreOffice format.
Perhaps as a login screen it is another elegant solution. This same
wallpaper sketch would also be available -without signs- to give the user
the choice to change it.
If the XFCE-Team considers this contribution interesting, perhaps it can
work out or provide solutions focused on visual accessibility. It would
also provide some modifications to improve the desktop experience that
currently makes up XFCE, and indirectly, some aspects of general
accessibility.
I must be prudent before indicating specific points or certain decisions to
be able to develop these arrangements or improvements, although I consider
that some of them would be quite simple to make.
I may present this idea to both XFCE and Xubuntu.
Yours sincerely.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/attachments/20200130/ee8f6663/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: XFCE Propuesta mejora accesibilidad Wallpaper.odp
Type: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.presentation
Size: 391830 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/attachments/20200130/ee8f6663/attachment-0001.odp>
More information about the Xfce4-dev
mailing list