Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!rosie!gehenna From: cmac@gehenna (Chris MacAskill) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: NeXT's for the visually impaired Message-ID: <629@rosie.NeXT.COM> Date: 1 May 91 04:44:02 GMT References: Sender: news@NeXT.COM Lines: 33 Nntp-Posting-Host: gehenna.next.com In article <4x2G5z-y1@cs.psu.edu> melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) writes: > Can the fonts in the menus, etc. be enlarged for the visually > impaired? This is a good and important question. We went to a conference on technology for the disabled a few weeks ago to learn what we should be doing to make the machines more accessible, and we heard this suggestion a few times. You can customize the font size and style in the File Viewer, making it easier to read. We set the font at 18 point Helvetica bold at the conference and it seemed to help. We're working on customized font sizes for the menus as well. There are many considerations, as Scott Hess mentioned in an earlier posting, and I can't say for sure what release will have this feature, if any (standard disclaimer), but we do think we're working towards a good solution. Finally, applications like Magnify, (from a developer at Stanford) allow a low vision user to inspect other areas of the screen that don't necessarily lend themselves to resizable fonts (details about icons, dialog boxes, etc.). Currently this app does not support color, but the sources can be obtained by anonymous ftp from cs.orst.edu. I doubt if it would require much work to make it work on the color products. As a personal aside, it was gratifying to see so many vendors willing to work together at the conference for the disabled to help make all computers more accessible. There were really great people there giving their own time to develop innovative and useful technologies. Chris MacAskill cmac@next.com (I will be away from email for the next two days.)