[Kde-accessibility] experimental idea with colour fonts

[Heiko Tietze]

Hi Thies,

it's always good to read experiences from affected users. I guess you manage 
the black/white stuff pretty well. If you need a certain app to get fixed or 
improved just tell us which one it is, or write a bug report. This thread was 
basically meant to discuss the idea of colored text to support dyslexic, or 
similar impairments. The question is whether or not it would help if 
characters (or maybe syllables) get a further identification by a color. From a 
psychological perspective it makes sense because the more modalities you use 
the deeper the information gets processed.

About the tracking mouse pointer: If you go to system settings (appearance 
section) > workspace effects (Arbeitsflächen-Effekte), you will find  
accessibility option including the animations for mouse clicks and magnifying 
glass under the mouse cursor (I'm still running 4.13, not sure if those 
options have been implemented in 5.1 now). 

Cheers,
Heiko.

On Sunday 21 September 2014, 20:48:49 Reinhard Thies wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am a visually impaired user. Changing the background to black and have a
> white font is very helpful for me. But many application do not support it.
> they simply ignore system settings.
> I can only see a small area of the screen and therefore the tracking mouse
> pointer and the circles around the mouse pointer when you press control are
> wonderful things, available in Windows OS. These are the things which would
> make life easier.
> 
> thanks
> Reinhard
> 
> On Sunday 21 September 2014 13:17:38 Heiko Tietze wrote:
> > > Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 14:57:32 +0200
> > > From: michel <okgomdjgbmoij at gmail.com>
> > > To: kde-accessibility at kde.org
> > > Subject: Re: [Kde-accessibility] experimental idea with colour fonts
> > > Message-ID: <2938529.DRQYV238BH at mike-ep31-ds3l>
> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> > > 
> > > i somehow made a little kate script ... that is now broken. (i made some
> > > blurred and normal screen shots, to demonstrate that you can decipher
> > > the
> > > letters if you know the colour code used, despite been impossible to see
> > > their shapes)
> > 
> > I like those ideas, in particular when they can get tested easily.
> > Katepart
> > (that means the following works in Kate and KWrite etc.) has an elaborated
> > highlighting [1], which is easy to modify. (This is my first attempt to
> > create a syntax highlighting file; for sure there is much room for
> > improvement.)
> > 
> > 1. Download the highlight definitions from http://pastebin.com/GzkH7AJb
> > 2. Place it at ~/.kde4/share/apps/katepart/syntax/ (create the syntax
> > folder if it doesn't exists) under the name coloredtext.xml
> > 3. (Re)start Kate, go to Extra > Highlighting > Markup and select "Colored
> > Text"
> > 4. Download the color scheme from http://pastebin.com/GsVSw3JY and save it
> > anywhere under the name coloredtext.katehlcolor
> > 5. In Kate/KWrite go to Settings > Fonts & Colors, tab "Styles for
> > highlighting", find Markup/Colored Text at the dropdown (if not selected)
> > and load the color definition via "Import" from the downloaded file
> > 
> > Now every letter gets its own color. And you can modify the scheme as you
> > want
> > 
> > Beside from the technical solution I believe it makes sense to define the
> > highlighting carefully. The proof-of-concept scheme is just multicolored
> > without any concept. What I have in mind is to put syllables or rather
> > phonemes into foreground, and to move less important letters backward
> > (vocals for instance).
> > But perhaps an individual solution would be even better. For a scientific
> > study I would measure eye fixations and highlight those parts later that
> > got special attention, that means a high number or long duration of
> > fixations. Unfortunately the resolution and framerate of inbuilt webcams
> > is not sufficient, as far as I know. So we cannot provide this as a
> > generic accessibility tool.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Heiko.
> > 
> > [1] http://kate-editor.org/2005/03/24/writing-a-syntax-highlighting-file/
> > _______________________________________________
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> > kde-accessibility at kde.org
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