[Trainer-Talk] ZoomText 2022, Windows 11, and high contrast

[Brian Vogel]

Well, I've tried my search of the archive and turned up nothing that's
useful in what was returned.  I used google and this operator,
*site:nfbnet.org/pipermail/trainer-talk_nfbnet.org/
<http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/trainer-talk_nfbnet.org/>*, along with
ZoomText and got fewer than 10 results.

I am working with ZoomText for the first time in over 5 years, and although
the user interface is not all that different than I remember it, the system
requirements (minimum of 16 GB memory) and how it interacts with Windows 11
and high-contrast themes is quite different.

I am finding myself in a quandary as far as getting things set up to match
his visual profile.  He has macular degeneration, and a dark background is
needed.  The problems lie in coming up with a combination of accommodations
that work.

We were trying to use ZoomText's color inversion feature, which is fine as
far as the pure color inversion goes, but it screws up other things like
the icon text on the desktop, making the actual lettering black and putting
a white-ish foggy halo around it.  This is very hard to read, and since he
can read, just wouldn't do.  ZoomText is also, for some reason, cutting off
the first letter or two letters at the beginning of any word/phrase it
reads as the mouse hovers over it.  I have tried a complete
uninstall/reinstall, and that didn't fix it.  Vispero support said to stop
using color inversion and, instead, to use one of Microsoft's high contrast
themes instead, which I've tried.

When a Microsoft high contrast theme is in use (and the one I chose that
"did it best" under Windows 11 was Night Sky) there are other issues,
particularly with Gmail's web interface.  When that theme is in use none of
the buttons that you should see other than the ones that have text labels
appear.  They are there if you mouse-over on them, and the divider bars are
still visible, but all the button icons are rendered black, which makes
that theme utterly useless.  And I will note that I am not using any
ZoomText color enhancements at the same time, so it is an issue with the
high contrast theme.

So then I created the rough equivalent of the High Contrast theme from a
regular theme, using a black desktop background.  That works beautifully
until you do something like creating a new email message, because the
compose window opens in classic white background with black lettering,
which is very difficult for this client to use.  Yes, we can use ZoomText
color inversion, and that works in the compose window itself, but while
that's good the rest of the dark background elsewhere inverts to bright
white, so we always have somewhere on the screen that is not as we want it
to be and that makes it hard on his eyes.

If anyone knows of "the magic combination" of settings in ZoomText and
Windows 11, or if there exists that magic combination in only one of those,
that allows us to consistently have a dark background and light lettering,
where certain windows don't just come up as they typically would with white
background and black lettering, I'd love to hear it.

Brian
-- 
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