Desktop Accessibility Scaling Options?

[bmstrong]

My Mom is a long time Mint user. Her eyesight is failing her as she approaches 60. Every time I try to pump up the font the rest of cinnamon, menus, icons, spaces, etc. never moves in proportion. Trying to scale the desktop results in the same thing, some things get bigger, some stay the same. I need something to scale the ENTIRE user space larger to suit her needs. What am I doing wrong? Do you have any tips or tricks?

[xenopeek]

In General settings you have the option for user interface scaling but right now that can only double the size of everything. That is meant for HiDPI displays and may be too large. You can fine tune the text by setting the text scaling factor on the Font settings to lower than 1.0 (reducing the size of the text; 0.9 being 10% smaller text). Perhaps you can use that to make something workable.

Probably the Accessibility (also in your menu) desktop zoom feature is not what you want. That zooms in on the desktop, making everything larger but showing only the portion of the zoomed desktop that fits on the screen. So moving the mouse around moves the view on the desktop. It's like using a magnifying glass. With this you can set in exact detail how much to magnify everything.

[Mick-Cork]

This sort of depends on what resolution the screen is running at now, but another option might be to go into the Display settings and see if there's a lower resolution with the same aspect ratio as the one currently in use. You lose some screen real estate with this approach, but on the other hand it might help your mum out.

[xenopeek]

In general running a screen at a lower than native resolution will make overall image more blurry. If you go from say 1920x1080 native resolution to 1366x768, that means every pixel on the monitor should display 0.7 pixels from the image. Unlike with old CRT monitors, modern monitors can't change the size of their pixels and so the image quality will suffer. You'd have to scale down the resolution by a non-fractional amount to avoid that, which does the same thing as described above with the HiDPI setting. But sure, give it a try if you want and see if it is workable.

[Mick-Cork]

Hi XP (hope you don't mind the initials , yep all depends on current monitor spec etc. In my own case I used to have my 1080p 14" screen set to 1600/900 and that worked very well. I then put the effort into tweaking things, scaling, browser default zooms, app themes etc, which allowed me to return to full resolution. I'm just thinking it's worth a quick look by the OP in case there's a suitable option there. Hopefully he/she'll return and let us know if they found a working solution.

[Mark G]

bmstrong, I know what your mother's experiencing. I'm in my 50's, and while my uncorrected eyesight was mediocre 30 years ago, it's not even that good today. Presbyopia, in particular, is a princess.

One option for your mom (and this is one I've primarily chosen for myself) is simply to get a pair of prescription computer eyeglasses. With my regular eyeglasses, I can't focus sharply on the computer screen; it's just too close. So I remove my regular glasses and slip on my computer glasses, and all is sharp again. Sure, they're not what I'd put on if I were going to be driving or something, but for distances in the 2-5' range, they do a fine job. When not in use, they sit on my computer desk, so they're always at hand when I need them.

Perhaps this would be a better solution than would messing with all manner of settings.

Naturally, just to be on the safe side, I hope your mother has visited an eye doctor recently, and been assured that there's nothing wrong with her eyesight, beyond simple aging.