Re: GNOME High Contrast Icon Theme

[meg ford <meg387 gmail com>]

Hi Joseph,

Thanks very much for the accessibility evaluation of the Symbolic icons, and please thank your OT for me, as well.

Regarding the specs/tracking issue, I would appreciate if you could clarify what you are looking for. In order to help with tracking (and in order nto hopefully provide what you are looking for) I filed bugs in Bugzilla reporting which icons are missing from High Contrast and High Contrast Inverse. Here are the links:
655836
655838
655839
655842
655844
655845
655846
655847
655851
655852
655853
655854
655855
655856
655857
655859
655860
655863

Andreas Nilsson suggested that I file a "metabug" ( 655873) to track all of these bugs, and also the bugs that Matthias Clasen reported. Matthias Clasen's bugs are also listed on the GNOME Accessibility wiki (HERE) under GNOME Themes Standard. If anyone would like me to, I can update the entry in the wiki to keep track of progress. I can also add the links to the new bugs there, if that is desirable.

The icons I am working on are in Gitorious, in the Tango Icons repo (HERE).

Many of the icons that are missing from both High Contrast and High Contrast inverse are present in the symbolic theme, so the plan is to provide those icons where applicable. I am working on more icons that will function as symbolic - ie change color with text, so those will provide additional coverage where symbolic icons are not present. High Contrast Inverse currently has the worst coverage (only around 95 icons present in the theme). However, I am working on these, as well, and many of them are present in High Contrast, and just need to have the colors reversed.  I hope that eventually we will be able to provide symbolic-style icons for all of the icons in High Contrast and High Contrast Inverse, but I am not able to complete a project of that scope in this internship.

I hope this answers your question. Please let me know.

Thanks again.

Sincerely,
Meg Ford
Womens Outreach Program Intern, Summer 2011

On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 2:17 PM, Joseph Scheuhammer <clown alum mit edu> wrote:

Hi Meg,

meg ford wrote (14-Jul-2011):

Hi,

I have one last question about High Contrast.

Jakub Steiner and Lapo Calamandrei have suggested that icons from the Symbolic Icon theme be used in High Contrast (see Figures 8 and 9,HERE <https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B8Rn9opx982NM2ViNmQ5MGEtNzBkMy00YTg4LWFhOTYtZWUxZGQ3ZjdlMjA2&hl=en_US> ). Symbolic icons are drawn in a simple, clear style, and are recolored by a theme engine so that they automatically match the text color on the graphical user interface. Because the text color already contrasts with the background color in the GUI, these icons are not outlined (note the contrasting outlines in Figures 10 and 11, HERE <https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B8Rn9opx982NM2ViNmQ5MGEtNzBkMy00YTg4LWFhOTYtZWUxZGQ3ZjdlMjA2&hl=en_US>).

The question I have is this: is the contrasting color enough for the low-vision user, or do we need to maintain the outlines in the High Contrast theme?

Joseph, I hope it is not abusing your good will to ask if you could run this by your vision OT? Please let me know if this is an issue for you,and thanks so much for your previous response.

Here is her reply:

Figure 8 looks great. The black image on a white background stands out.
The other figures don't stand out in the high contrast theme. I would remove the outline, black box around it, so the image stands out more.

meg ford also wrote (19-Jul-2011):

Bryen asked me to send examples of how the Symbolic and High Contrast Icons will look in GNOME 3. Here are some screenshots from Fedora 15: The first two are of High Contrast and High Contrast Inverse as they are now (see HERE <https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B8Rn9opx982NY2U5ZjdhYzgtNGUzMi00NWRiLTllOTEtYzA5ZGZmM2JjZTBh&hl=en_US> and HERE <https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B8Rn9opx982NMWZjNjNjNmQtODk2Ny00ODY1LWFkMGUtM2YwMzEwODcxODNh&sort=name&layout=list&num=50>). I edited the second two so that they show Symbolic Icons and new High Contrast Icons (seeHERE <https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B8Rn9opx982NY2U5ZjdhYzgtNGUzMi00NWRiLTllOTEtYzA5ZGZmM2JjZTBh&hl=en_US> and HERE <https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B8Rn9opx982NMzBiNmMyMzktYzZkNy00MDE4LWE0N2QtNjRmYmQxYjdlZWZh&hl=en_US> ). Please note that I am still working on some (such as the scanner icon) and so they have not been included. Please let me know if there are any issues with viewing these examples.

Our OT suggests:

Hi Joseph, all the icons look great, with the exception of the 'Software Update' icon. The overlapping images make it hard to determine what the image represents. When magnified, this image would be difficult to identify.

Finally, I have question about the high contrast theme:  Where are the specs documented? Or, if there are no specs, is there an online resource (e.g., wiki) where the work is being tracked?

Thanks.

--
;;;;joseph

'I had some dreams, they were clowns in my coffee. Clowns in my coffee.'
                    - C. Simon (misheard lyric) -