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Joseph,

In addition to getting input from the current users, I think it may be 
helpful to think about the impacts of different vision impairments, and 
what features may best help folks with those differences.  For example, 
some people experience a loss of central vision (e.g. macular 
degeneration), while others a loss of peripheral vision (e.g. glaucoma).

To help answer your questions about whether these settings are best 
provided independently of one another (or linked together), it would be 
good to seek opinions from folks across the spectrum of vision impairments.


Regards,

Peter

On 2/14/2014 8:25 AM, Joseph Scheuhammer wrote:
> Improvements to the magnifier preferences dialog have been suggested.  
> A mockup, courtesy of Allan Day, can be found at the following URL:
> https://raw.github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/system-settings/universal-access/zoom-and-filters.png 
>
>
> One of the additions is a check box labelled "Keep keyboard focus in  
> view" that is on the left hand "Zoom" panel.  This is for toggling the 
> activation of focus/caret tracking.
>
> The gnome-shell magnifier supports tracking modes for widget focus,  
> caret focus, and mouse pointer movement.  Furthermore, these are 
> independent of each other.  However, the proposed dialog combines 
> them.   The radio buttons above the check box list different mouse 
> tracking  modes, i.e. "Push with pointer", "Follow pointer", and "Keep 
> pointer  centered".  Whatever mode is set for the mouse will be used 
> for both  focus and caret tracking.
>
> The question is what do magnifier users want or need regarding 
> tracking types?  Are there use cases for having the types of tracking 
> independent of each other?  Or, if the user chooses "centered" for 
> one,  that applies to all? We would really like user input.
>
> To give a better idea of what this is about, I'll be the use case, 
> since  I use a magnifier on occasion, and at a low magnification 
> factor (1.75x).  My preference is "push" for mouse and caret tracking, 
> but  "centered" for focus tracking.
>
> With respect to the mouse, I prefer it behave as close as possible to  
> the non-magnifier experience.  On a standard desktop, the mouse 
> moves,  not the contents.  The mouse tracking mode that comes the 
> closest to  that experience is "push", where the contents do not move 
> in the  magnified view until the mouse abuts up against an edge. When 
> it does,  the contents do move, but only enough to bring them into view.
>
> For myself, the text caret works in a similar way.  When using a word  
> processor, the caret generally moves in small increments -- left, 
> right,  up, and down --  and I prefer that the contents not move until 
> they need to.
>
> However, when using the keyboard to tab-navigate around the UI, widget 
> focus frequently jumps over large distances.  For example, I may be 
> near  the bottom of the screen editing a text document when I use 
> alt+tab to  use the task switcher.  Focus moves (warps) to the centre 
> of the screen,  far from where I was typing.  I need to reorientto the 
> new screen contents (my point of regard, so to speak),  and, in my 
> case, that is helped by centering the widget that just  acquired focus 
> -- I prefer "centered" tracking for changes in widget  focus.  Trying 
> to preserve little or no movement in the contents is  pointless here 
> since focus is likely to move large distances.
>
> Now, that's just me, and I stress that I am **not**putting my 
> preferences  forward as any kind of standard.  In fact, quite the 
> opposite.  Those  are my user preferences.  I fully expect other 
> magnifier users to have different ones, and we would like to know 
> yours so that we fully understand the needs and can incorporate them 
> into the UI being designed: Do you use the same tracking mode for 
> focus, caret, and mouse or different modes for each? And if you use 
> different modes, why?
>
> Thanks.
>