[Kde-accessibility] Re: KDE screen resolution policy

[Bill Haneman]

Hi, Happy New Year everyone (and an early Happy New Year to those in 
China :-)

I'd like to comment on the 640x400 accessibility issue.  I agree that 
this is desirable for
accessibility, but since 640x480 is getting less and less common, 
perhaps 800x600 is
a better target for now.  A 'virtual' 800x600 (with a physical 640x480), 
which I believe
XFree supports now, may be a good compromise, since it allows 
applications to write
to a somewhat bigger virtual area in which the 640x480 area is panned.

What's possibly even more important is support for larger fonts; 12 
point isn't usually
big enough for users with vison difficulties, unless fullscreen 
magnification is available
(KMag can't do that yet, and even gnome-mag/gnopernicus has a hard time 
unless you
have two framebuffers).

I think 18 to 20 point fonts are a reasonable target.  This will 
(especially in conjunction
with 800x600 displays) probably be harder to accommodate than just 
640x480, but it's
really important.  I would argue that working well with such large fonts 
is actually more
critical to accessibility than working with a limited screen resolution.

There's no reason why this is impossible, but it requires careful design 
of widget sets
and user interfaces.

Best regards,

Bill

...

>This is really an important thing for people with low vision. Even on my
>800x600 laptop screen, I sometimes have this problem with big KDE or Qt
>windows. 
>
>We really need to make sure that windows work with small resolutions
>like 640x400 and a reasonable font size like 12 pt. There might be cases
>where this is difficult, but even then the layout must be made usable on
>small screens by providing scrollbars.
>
>The layout should be designed such that on small screens, the windows
>are rather too high than too wide, size vertical scrollbars have better
>usability than horizontal ones. But the most important thing is that
>scrollbars are available at all, which currently is not the case for
>oversized windows. I guess these scrollbars are best added within Qt.
>
>Harald, is something like this planed for Qt 3.3? This would make a nice
>accessibility improvement in addition to the ATK bridge.
>
>Olaf
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