Re: Theme Set, part two

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

On Sun, 2002-09-01 at 15:39, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> On 30Aug2002 01:28PM (+0100), Bill Haneman wrote:
> > 
> > I don't agree with the number-of-clicks argument, keeping Fonts out of
> > Theme Set just decreases the number for some use cases at the expense of
> > others.
> > 
> 
> It seems that the requirements for a desktop theme facility are
> somewhat at odds with the requirements to use themes as an
> accessibility feature. 

I still think this means we haven't thought about it enough yet...

> To me this argues that themes shouldn't be the mechanism used to do
> accessibility features like "large fonts" or "reverse video" or "high
> contrast". Indeed, on some other systems I've seen, the latter are
> separate preferences which are kept with accessibility preferences,
> rather than special themes, and are totally orthogonal to the theme. I
> think the fact that Windows conflates these with themes is sorely
> mistaken.

Hmm, well, as I understand it the conflation addresses needs and
requirements expressed by users and 'accessibility domain experts', in
other words I don't think that was MS-folly or their invention.

There are of course cases where you want to do this some other way
besides the theme, for instance reverse-video "magnifiers", etc., and we
will need to do this.  _Also_, not instead ;-).

> There's no reason you shouldn't be able to pick the theme of your
> choice *and* use large fonts.

Of course, and you can.  I certainly am not suggesting that users,
including low-vision users, wouldn't want to do that.

However, low-vision accessibility is about more than just font size,
that's why themes are important to accessibility.  It's also vital that
accessibility use well-supported means of doing the things it needs, to
reduce the incidence of conflict and non-compliance.

-Bill

> Regards,
> 
> Maciej
>