[Tux4kids-discuss] Tux Paint accessibility ideas (Was re: [Tuxpaint-devel] GSOC 2010 Questions)

[Bill Kendrick]

On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 12:57:34AM +0530, ankit choudhary wrote:
>    Hi all,
>    I am really interested in idea of accessibility improvements for tux
>    paint.
>    Could you please tell me something more about it?

A very brief answer, because I've very busy lately. (And I don't think I saw
anyone else respond to this.)

Basically, Tux Paint's UI is highly hard-coded.  It assumes 48x48 buttons
with ~40x30 pixmap icons inside.  There's no user-friendly way to change
the theme (e.g., instead of the glassy-looking buttons, using something
similar).  It can be done by simply replacing some of the art files (PNGs),
but that's very difficult to do on some platforms and in some environments
and situations (e.g., if the user does not have administrator access and
cannot alter the installed Tux Paint files), and it's not flexible
(some users may need bigger buttons or higher contrast, but others do not).

The original Tux Paint assumed a 640x480 window or screen, which was
eventually expanded to support 640x480 or 800x600, and then shortly after
that, any arbitrary screen size (that was at least 640 wide and 480 tall)
and aspect ratio (e.g., 800x600 of a Nokia Maemo handheld internet device or
1280x1440 of a portrait-oriented (i.e., taller-than-wide) tablet PC).

That was a good step, and allows for much larger canvas sizes (and better use
of large or oddly-shaped displays; e.g., no bad pixel scaling on an LCD and
no black borders on the top/bottom or left/right edges).  However, now when
you look at Tux Paint on a very-high-resolution display, since the buttons
are still 48x48 in size, they are a MUCH smaller physical size
(inches/centimeters) on the screen.

Allowing arbitrarily-sized buttons, scaled sets of PNG icon bitmaps
(and, where available, simply using SVG for icons), and together with this
theme support (e.g., high-contrast mode) are the initial set of ideas I've
had for Tux Paint.

Beyond that, things like speech support (either within Tux Paint using
a text-to-speech (TTS) layer like Festival or recorded audio, like we
do for Stamp descriptions right now, and/or hooking into the
accessibility layer of the host OS to utilize its TTS) and other
accessibility features: force-feedback on mouse when moving across
widgets, adding fuller keyboard support so the program can be operated
entirely by keyboard, and conversely, adding an on-screen keyboard
so the Text tool can be used without a physical keyboard, adding
joystick support, etc.

Whew.

Hope that inspirse some folks out here. :)

-bill!
Cc'ing tux4kids-discuss to let subscribers there see what I've said