Bug 398937

Summary:	Option to display text instead of icons to compensate for visual agnosia.
Product:	[Plasma] plasmashell	Reporter:	shughes1453
Component:	general	Assignee:	David Edmundson <kde>
Status:	RESOLVED MOVED
Severity:	normal	CC:	nate, plasma-bugs
Priority:	NOR
Version:	master
Target Milestone:	1.0
Platform:	Other
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description shughes1453 2018-09-22 02:21:21 UTC

SUMMARY
Visual agnosia is a visual impairment where one can't recognize the objects that one is looking at. For example, a person with visual agnosia would not be able to tell what the icons in, say, the system tray mean.

A reasonable accommodation for this is to use text instead of icons; for example, LibreOffice allows for buttons to only show text with no icon.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Check every option in Accessibility settings
2. Realize there is no option
3. Check the panel settings; nothing there either
4. Switch to using the application menu and window list
5. Resign yourself to having to wait for the pop up to know if that's the icon that will bring up the text

EXPECTED RESULT
Click the "use text only buttons" option in Accessibility and have the DE use all text only buttons. Individual programs would ideally inherit this, but not necessarily, since many already allow this.

ACTUAL RESULT
There is no option for this other than "make text icons" which is suboptimal, since it would limit the size of the type.

SOFTWARE VERSIONS
(available in About System)
KDE Plasma Version: 5.50.0
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.50.0
Qt Version: 5.11.1

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
If you could also make the text inherit the font size set by the user, that would also be appreciated.
I hope I got the information right, turns out some of the information was hidden in menus that were only denoted by an icon.
I haven't really explained much about visual agnosia, so here's a link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_agnosia
I'd also like to specify that this bug report/feature request accommodates associative agnosia.

Comment 1 shughes1453 2018-09-22 03:44:31 UTC

I wanted to add some additional information. (Sorry, I've never filed a bug report before.)

*Tool tips are useful. For example, there's an icon on the top bar of all windows that when you hover over it says "Menu". In system settings, though, there's a blurry rectangle/square thing next to the search box that doesn't have anything when you hover over it, but when you click, it's a menu. So a tool tip there would be helpful.

*To continue the example of the system settings, a tool tip would be nice but even better would be being able to replace it with the word "menu". 

*This is specific to me, it may be different with other people, but I don't mind tiny icons next to text at a readable size. The colors can help, for example orange is Firefox. But when they're big they can be distracting.

*Another example: replace the battery icon with "Battery: 85%, 3 hours remaining" or if the computer's plugged in "Charging".

Comment 2 Christoph Feck 2018-10-13 23:16:37 UTC

We already have:
- Toolbars can be set to icons, text, or text+icons, including configurable text and icon sizes
- Buttons have text, can show icons, respecting global icon and text sizes
- Menu items have text, can show icons, respecting global icon and text sizes

For other user inferface elements where the option to have text is missing (e.g. no tooltip), please file individual bug reports, since missing text would need to be added at different software components.

Comment 3 Nate Graham 2018-10-14 05:05:21 UTC

Yes, please file individual bugs for cases where you find that something has an icon and no text or tooltip, and can't be given one or another. Unfortunately, each of these will have its own code so it can't all be done centrally.