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Question

Hello all,
At the Washington DC InDesign User Group meeting last night, the question came up about the size of text labels and buttons and menus in InDesign. A young woman wanted bigger buttons and text menus and said that the Retina display was making an already small thing even smaller and harder to see and read.
Another colleague and I were noting that many of us folks who have pioneered the use of these softwares are sailing along with gradually diminishing vision. I, too, am starting to wish for more "accessibility" in the menus, labels, and buttons of Adobe software.
I am aware that interface design has long been built with pixels. When I designed my 3 configurator plugin panels (available at http://trainingonsite.com), the first thing I wanted to do was make the buttons bigger. But text labeling is fixed. The only thing I could do was make more space around tool buttons.
Anyway, what are you doing to compensate for your vision? Are there software-based solutions? Hardware solutions? What is Adobe planning to do? I would think that we constitute a large portion of Adobe's customer base, no?
Best to you,
Mike Witherell in Maryland

Answer 1

Suppose you were able to replace your large desktop monitor with an even much bigger tv panel...
I do work for a local screen printer. All their PC stations have LCD TVs. No name TVs, 28" to 32", set back a bit further than I use. They work out just fine.
Here's the thing. Would I do it? Dunno, but as I am working on replacing an aging desktop, I am thinking about it. Why? Because I began this madness using GEM Ventura on an amber monitor. When I stepped up to a paper white monitor, I thought I was in the big time. While I mainly did tech manuals, we still did add color too.
It was common early on to use one of the CMY channels for spot color (usually the CM channels). Garish on-screen once we got color monitors but shades of gray on the paper whites. If I can live/work with that, an LCD flat panel TV wouldn't be so bad. I still like my calibrated CRT for "accuracy"...as accurate as a back-lit display really is. But it is the color values that matter most to me. I can do the same quality of work on my LCD laptop. But I am also not color correcting high-end coffee table books. For layout work like I do now? I think they would be good enough.
Sooner or later I'll have to make a decision. It's a cheap experiement though. The screen printer I mention gets their LCDs from a local pawn shop for pennies on the dollar. If I go that route initially, the cost of a "real" monitor is the same down the road as if I purchase it when I buy the new system.