New user preferences: accessibility

Development
#1

Good afternoon!

Context

When looking at a few issues related to accessibility in XWiki, I noticed that some style changes to the visual UI would be important for low vision users but a regression for most users (especially power users). Right now, XWiki does have an ‘Extra accessibility’ user preference. This preference toggles a couple CSS rules (increased font-size and all links underlined). However, in order to give good control to the user on how the content would be displayed, I think we should add some more of those user preferences related to accessibility. A higher granularity will allow a more customized experience that can be optimized for all kind of users and all kinds of conditions.

Proposal

This is why I propose to:

  • Remove the existing ‘extra accessibility’ preference
  • Add a category with multiple accessibility preferences in the User settings > Preferences
  • Include the ‘Font size’ and ‘link underlining’ preferences in this category

Clarifications

Here is an unpolished prototype with extra preferences, to get an idea of what these changes would bring once a few more accessibility preferences are added:
accessibilityPreferences

I think that it’s not worth to create a new tab in the user settings for those, but let me know if you think it’s an important addition to make.

Conclusion

This topic is related to this discussion about inline link underlining.

Do you agree with this proposal? Should there be a new tab in the user settings for accessibility?

Thank you in advance for your feedback :slight_smile:
Lucas C.

1 Like
Underline inline links
#2

+1. I would start with a section inside the Preferences tab, as you proposed. We can later decide to create a new tab if the number of accessibility options increases a lot.

Thanks,
Marius

#3

+1 for the general idea, it’s very useful

At the current number of settings regarding accessibility, it’s great for them to stay in the Preferences tab.

I think a new tab special for accessibility in the user settings menu would be the best approach if we add more settings in the future

#4

And migrate existing settings when upgrading.

In your screenshot you have already 5 items related to Accessibility and I’m pretty sure that the page is already scrolling vertically. I think I would do the following:

  • Move accessibility to its own tab
  • Rename “Preferences” as “General” since a lot of tabs are about preferences so its name is already not perfect

Thanks

1 Like
#5

AFAIK those 5 are just ideas of what we could put in the Accessibility section, but I’m not sure if we’ll implement all of them too soon (it could take years). We’ll probably start with one or two, so I don’t think it deserves a separate tab initially.

1 Like
#6

ah ok, didn’t know. What options do we have now? Just 2: larger texts and underline? or some more?

#7

Yup, splitting up the current extraAccessibility feature, there’s only those 2 options.

#8

ok then it’s fine to have inside Preferences FTM I guess then. Thanks

#9

Currently making progress on this as a part of the improvements for XWIKI-21492: Underline inline links.