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Bug 673417 - gnome-shell's main colour makes text hard to read (a11y problem)
gnome-shell's main colour makes text hard to read (a11y problem)
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 618888
Product: gnome-shell
Classification: Core
Component: general
3.2.x
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: gnome-shell-maint
gnome-shell-maint
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2012-04-03 09:52 UTC by W. Martin Borgert
Modified: 2012-10-27 12:17 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: 3.1/3.2


Attachments
screenshot of the gnome-tweak-tool dialog (44.01 KB, image/png)
2012-05-09 23:03 UTC, Joanmarie Diggs (IRC: joanie)
Details

Description W. Martin Borgert 2012-04-03 09:52:02 UTC
I'm using the GNOME Shell on Debian testing/unstable (aka wheezy/sid).

The default white text on black background is hard to read for me. My vision is only mildly impaired (glasses, age!), but maybe it also depends on the LCD quality.

The only alternative I could find was a black on white high-contrast theme, which is too much for my me.

It would be very helpful to have a moderate black-on-grey theme, as it is the default panel colour scheme of e.g. GNOME2 or XFCE. Even better if it would not use transparency effects in the dialogues. Transparency looks cool, but again, it's harder to read, when you are in my age ;~)

I found some hints in the web about changing the panels colour, but that involved either manually editing CSS files or installing non-packaged programmes, so I did not try them.

Note, that bug #603867 was addressing the same issue, but not from an a11y pov.
Comment 1 Alejandro Piñeiro Iglesias (IRC: infapi00) 2012-04-30 17:03:03 UTC
(In reply to comment #0)
> I'm using the GNOME Shell on Debian testing/unstable (aka wheezy/sid).
> 
> The default white text on black background is hard to read for me. My vision is
> only mildly impaired (glasses, age!), but maybe it also depends on the LCD
> quality.
> 
> The only alternative I could find was a black on white high-contrast theme,
> which is too much for my me.
> 
> It would be very helpful to have a moderate black-on-grey theme, as it is the
> default panel colour scheme of e.g. GNOME2 or XFCE. Even better if it would not
> use transparency effects in the dialogues. Transparency looks cool, but again,
> it's harder to read, when you are in my age ;~)

Well, I guess that the problem with "moderate black-on-grey theme" is that each user could have a different definition of moderate. Joseph Scheuehammer has been working during the last months on adding Brightness/Lightness/Contrast effects on the magnifier (although I guess that this should not fix the problem with transparencies).

More information about this:
https://live.gnome.org/ThreePointFive/Features/LightnessBrightnessContrastEffects

This almost arrived for 3.4, a pity, but almost for sure will be on 3.6
Comment 2 W. Martin Borgert 2012-05-07 23:13:11 UTC
(In reply to comment #1)
> Well, I guess that the problem with "moderate black-on-grey theme" is that each
> user could have a different definition of moderate.

Let's try the GNOME2 panel colour scheme for a start :~) I never had a reason to change it as it was.

> Joseph Scheuehammer has
> been working during the last months on adding Brightness/Lightness/Contrast
> effects on the magnifier (although I guess that this should not fix the problem
> with transparencies).

How is the magnifier related to the colours of the shell? (I didn't even know, that there is a magnifier. How can I start it?)
Comment 3 Milan Bouchet-Valat 2012-05-08 12:39:32 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> How is the magnifier related to the colours of the shell? (I didn't even know,
> that there is a magnifier. How can I start it?)
Have a look at the universal access indicator menu.
Comment 4 Joseph Scheuhammer 2012-05-08 13:31:47 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> (In reply to comment #1)
> ...
> How is the magnifier related to the colours of the shell? (I didn't even know,
> that there is a magnifier. How can I start it?)

In addition to the universal access menu, beginning with 3.4, there is a "Zoom Options" preferences dialog in the System Settings "Universal Access" control panel.

As for colours, the magnifier will be able to modify the overall brightness/contrast of the screen, as well as on a per channel basis; and invert the lightness.  Screen shots of the inversion effect and overall change in contrast are shown on the page Alejandro noted:
https://live.gnome.org/ThreePointFive/Features/LightnessBrightnessContrastEffects
Comment 5 W. Martin Borgert 2012-05-08 22:02:31 UTC
OK, the magnifier will be a great addition to GNOME. But it's not related to this bug report, right?
Comment 6 Alejandro Piñeiro Iglesias (IRC: infapi00) 2012-05-09 11:49:59 UTC
(In reply to comment #5)
> OK, the magnifier will be a great addition to GNOME. But it's not related to
> this bug report, right?

The magnifier is already added. About the relation to this bug, I though that it was related, so I included that on the conversation, because you mentioned that you tried the high-contrast themes and didn't work because it was too extreme. One of the purposes of the soon-to-be added Lightness/Brightness/Contrast effects on the magnifier is provide a similar feature of the x-contrast themes, but also provide to the user a way to configure it.

Anyway, it is true that additionally to those effects it would be good to have some predefined configurable themes (see bug 618888 for more information)
Comment 7 Joanmarie Diggs (IRC: joanie) 2012-05-09 18:06:34 UTC
(In reply to comment #0)

> I found some hints in the web about changing the panels colour, but that
> involved either manually editing CSS files or installing non-packaged
> programmes, so I did not try them.

In Fedora there are distro packaged extensions, themes, and the tweak tool. I'm guessing these are not in Debian? If they are not, it might be worth opening a downstream bug to request that they start doing so. Regardless, if all you are seeking is easily-selectable gnome-shell themes, I think this bug is a duplicate of bug 618888.

(In reply to comment #5)
> OK, the magnifier will be a great addition to GNOME. But it's not related to
> this bug report, right?

That would be my guess. You could use it to alleviate some of the issues associated with the transparency, but that would not change the fact that you have white text on a black background. You could also use it to achieve the gnome-shell appearance you want (invert lightness, modify colors on a per-channel basis as described in comment 4), but that would apply to the entire screen (as also indicated in comment 4). Long way of saying using the magnifier features described could make gnome-shell look "right" for you, but everything else would not.

For what it's worth, I'm in a very similar situation as you, but for a different reason: I'm photophobic. So the ONLY thing that IS right for me at the moment is the current gnome-shell theme and I have to wear sunglasses all day. (The navy blue theme just doesn't cut it for me.) The ability to invert lightness is going to solve my problem, but at the "cost" of making gnome-shell harder for me to see. Thus I need more or less the same theme you do. :) That way, when I invert lightness, gnome-shell will look "right" for me. <shrugs and smiles> Anyhoo, I found such themes in Fedora. As I stated above, that plus bug 618888 seem to be the answers.

Sorry for being long-winded....
Comment 8 W. Martin Borgert 2012-05-09 21:59:11 UTC
(In reply to comment #7)
> In Fedora there are distro packaged extensions, themes, and the tweak tool. I'm
> guessing these are not in Debian?

gnome-tweak-tool is 3.2.2 in Debian testing, gnome-shell-extensions is 3.2.3, both installed on my system. But so far, I don't know how to activate or use any extensions. In the gnome-tweak-tool there is not much to tweak. I can select a theme, but the theme is ignored by the GNOME shell, which is probably another bug.

> Sorry for being long-winded....

No, this is interesting, because it shows that some people need particular colour schemes to be able to use the computer, for different reasons.
Comment 9 Joanmarie Diggs (IRC: joanie) 2012-05-09 23:03:02 UTC
Created attachment 213773 [details]
screenshot of the gnome-tweak-tool dialog

(In reply to comment #8)
 
> gnome-tweak-tool is 3.2.2 in Debian testing, gnome-shell-extensions is 3.2.3,
> both installed on my system. But so far, I don't know how to activate or use
> any extensions. In the gnome-tweak-tool there is not much to tweak.

For me, if I select 'Shell Extensions' on the left, I have a bunch I can tweak, but I installed those extensions. Moreover that's getting off topic for this bug. Let's see if we can solve your theme issue.

> I can select a theme, but the theme is ignored by the GNOME shell

How/where are you selecting it? At the risk of (and many apologies for) asking "Is it plugged in?" you are changing the 'Shell theme' and not the 'GTK+ theme', right? See the attached screenshot. BTW, the 'Orta' theme was one I installed via Fedora and might get you close to what you are looking for (the font is a tad small, but the colors seem right).
Comment 10 W. Martin Borgert 2012-05-09 23:18:08 UTC
(In reply to comment #9)
> For me, if I select 'Shell Extensions' on the left, I have a bunch I can tweak,
> but I installed those extensions. Moreover that's getting off topic for this
> bug. Let's see if we can solve your theme issue.

This seems to be broken on Debian. I will file a bug there.

> How/where are you selecting it? At the risk of (and many apologies for) asking
> "Is it plugged in?" you are changing the 'Shell theme' and not the 'GTK+
> theme', right? See the attached screenshot. BTW, the 'Orta' theme was one I
> installed via Fedora and might get you close to what you are looking for (the
> font is a tad small, but the colors seem right).

I learned that gnome-shell seems to ignore GTK+ themes (which is surely a bug), and in gnome-tweak-tools on Debian the shell themes item exists, but is empty. So probably there is nothing installed in Debian testing.

(Probably it's all a matter of time: When I looked at GNOME 3.0 it was almost unusable for me, 3.2 is already much better, so I'm sure, most of these things will be solved in 3.4 or 3.6...)
Comment 11 Joanmarie Diggs (IRC: joanie) 2012-05-09 23:37:23 UTC
> I learned that gnome-shell seems to ignore GTK+ themes (which is surely a bug),

I'm not so sure about that being a bug as opposed to a design choice, but I'll leave it to others to comment.

> and in gnome-tweak-tools on Debian the shell themes item exists, but is empty.
> So probably there is nothing installed in Debian testing.

Dunno. My gnome-tweak-tool finds themes I have in /usr/share/themes and also themes I have in $HOME/.themes. BTW, you can also find additional themes through http://gnome-look.org. The themes there are made by individuals, and humans tend to be human. ;) (i.e. just because you find a sucky theme doesn't mean you should give up, but sometimes persistence is required.)

Lastly, since this bug seems to be "We need easy to choose, more accessible themes" and since bug 618888 is a gnome-shell bug about creating accessible themes, I'm going to mark this bug as a dup of that one.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 618888 ***
Comment 12 W. Martin Borgert 2012-05-10 06:32:48 UTC
(In reply to comment #11)
> > I learned that gnome-shell seems to ignore GTK+ themes (which is surely a bug),
>
> I'm not so sure about that being a bug as opposed to a design choice, but I'll
> leave it to others to comment.

Inconsistent look and feel as a "design choice"? Probably not.

> > and in gnome-tweak-tools on Debian the shell themes item exists, but is empty.
> > So probably there is nothing installed in Debian testing.
>
> Dunno. My gnome-tweak-tool finds themes I have in /usr/share/themes and also
> themes I have in $HOME/.themes.

In /usr/share/themes I find 239 subdirectories, but in the "Advanced Settings" the box right to "Shell theme" is empty, only a yellow triangle with a with exclamation mark is shown.

> BTW, you can also find additional themes
> through http://gnome-look.org. The themes there are made by individuals, and
> humans tend to be human. ;) (i.e. just because you find a sucky theme doesn't
> mean you should give up, but sometimes persistence is required.)

From the first look some of the themes look nice. However, they are not yet packaged for Debian.

> Lastly, since this bug seems to be "We need easy to choose, more accessible
> themes" and since bug 618888 is a gnome-shell bug about creating accessible
> themes, I'm going to mark this bug as a dup of that one.

Themes is just a possible technical solution to the problem I have. I need a good readable desktop. If this will be achieved by themes, fine with me. Another technical solution would be to allow the user to select foreground and background colour of the shell. Maybe there are other possible solutions.

So I suggest to not mark this bug as duplicate, because the other bug is about a specific technical solution.