Gnome 3.8 Accessibility improvements!

Accessibility is an always important factor for Gnome designers/developers. All the people of the world should be able to use and contribute to our favorite desktop environment no matter their physical disabilities.

Two new accessibility oriented/related features are now discussed and initiating with the purpose of being ready for the 3.8 release. These are the color tinting in Gnome Shell and the focus-caret tracking.

Color Tinting

With the 3.6 release that will be available very soon, the Gnome Shell magnifier will be able to change the tinting but no graphical user interface tool is yet available to allow users to easily set the desired tinting.

A simple and easy to use tool for 3.8 (magnifier preferences) will be available, offering setting bars for brightness and contrast on a per channel basis (RGB).

Focus-Caret Tracking

The GNOME Shell magnifier currently relies on Orca to track the current keyboard focus, scrolling the view of the magnified content to include the focused UI element or caret position. This is acceptable for the very few users who require both a screen reader and screen magnifier simultaneously. However, for the majority of magnifier users, who want to use only a magnifier, it is overkill to launch a screen reader as well. The shell should have its own focus tracking mechanism.

The prototype JavaScript has been implemented but there are many bugs right now as well as many things missing. The next steps include building a GUI, fix freezing problems, clean code, add gsettings and integrate with the magnifier.

Sources: tinting, tracking