Category: VI / Blind

A Rare Update

Posted on by Chris

I’m an artist now! There I said it, so it’s true! Who woulda thought it? Having spent almost my entire adult life so far, as a software engineer, I decided I needed a change. Actually, it’s not quite that cut and dry, and in fact my current artistic distraction began as a tech project. Essentially, I was exploring neural networks and deep learning, and I stumbled into the whole art side of NNs. My deep learning sandbox inexorably became an art tool set, and now I spend my days making strange, abstract art. I am what is called, a Generative Artist, and I make abstract art using all sorts of cool software I’m actively programming and developing. You can see some examples of the art I make below. I also have an Instagram account for all this stuff, so feel free to check it out.

I come from a family of artists and creativity runs deep in the genes, but being the “technical” one in the family, my work and interests were always considered not so much artistic, but still creative. This new art thing is a perfect mix of skills and interests, and my programming chops have enabled me to understand and make some nice tools and tech that allows me to express myself in a cool and unique way. It just goes to show that life is unpredictable, and how ironic it can be too. I am legally blind, and I decide to be an artist and make visual art. It’s fucking hilarious really!

https://www.instagram.com/s0da.ai/

 

Fixing Google Docs Broken Text Selection Highlight (High Contrast/Dark Themes)

Posted on by Chris

Google Docs is a pretty swish web app, but unfortunately its styling follows Google’s preference for flat, low contrast design. As a visually impaired user, this renders Google Docs inaccessible for me, unless I switch my browser (Firefox) to use the high contrast Windows color scheme, or use a “dark reader” type of add-on. Using either makes Google Docs usable with nice, dark, high contrast colors. BUT, and this is a HUGE BUT, it completely breaks the text selection highlight color when you click and drag your mouse or use cursor keys to select letters, words or blocks of text. The highlight is invisible, and selecting text is reduced to a stressful guessing game. It’s crap and makes me saaaad.

Googling about the issue shows nothing, and looking for info on Google Docs CSS editing/hacking shows 10 year old results, for a product that doesn’t resemble today’s Google Docs at all. Sigh!

So what’s a tired eyed engineer to do? Hack the document and figure out what CSS actually controls the selection and highlight colors, obviously! Using Stylish (or your choice of CSS injector), add the following CSS rule to work on the docs.google.com domain..

.kix-selection-overlay {
background-color:#777!important;
border-top:1px solid #eee;
border-bottom:1px solid #eee;
opacity:1;
}

Simple! No idea if this is common knowledge. I certainly couldn’t find anything useful online, and this works nicely for me. The colors can obviously be anything you fancy. I can now use Google Docs with abandon and see exactly what I’m selecting and copying!

Enjoy!

WordPress Admin Dark Theme – Stylish

Posted on by Chris

Following on from my previous post about hacking the dark theme on VS 2017, I thought I’d share another useful trick for making the WordPress Admin Dashboard nice and dark and easy on the eyes. There are various addons for Chrome that will let you invert the screen (Deluminate), or modify a page’s CSS (Stylebot), but none really fully work the WordPress Dashboard for various reasons.

So, enter Stylish, a really cool addon that allows you to wholesale replace the CSS for a site or page or domain. There are tons of user made themes being shared, and you can get dark versions of most of the major sites. It’s easy to create your own styles for your own needs too.

This is how to turn all your WordPress dashboards into a beautiful, restful and dark experience.

  • Install Stylish
  • Go to your Worpress Dashboard of choice
  • Click the Stylish icon (top right browser)
  • Click the “3 dots” menu (top right) and select “Create New Style”
  • In the “Code 1” box, paste this..
body {
     background-color: black!important;
     color: white!important;
}
body * {
     background-color: black!important;
     color: white!important;
}
body.wp-autoresize {
     background-color: #111!important;
}
  •  Select “URLs matching the Regexp” from the “Applies to:” drop down
  • Paste this regex into the text box..
(?=.*?\/wp-admin\/).*
  • Give your theme a name and save it
  • You should now have lovely, dark Dashboards, everywhere you go

You can obviously expand on the CSS above and set your own colors or whatever.

Enjoy!

Visual Studio 2017 High Contrast Theme Dark Registry Hack (Updated)

Posted on by Chris

I run a high contrast Windows theme because I have crappy eyesight. I also program for a living and use Microsoft Visual Studio. Visual Studio has a rather lovely “Dark” theme that suits my tired old eyes very well. Unfortunately, Microsoft won’t let me use their nice “Dark” theme, because someone at Microsoft thinks they know what I want, better than I know myself. Instead, Microsoft forces Visual Studio to use their special “High Contrast” theme. The theme dropdown in the options is disabled and font/color styling is limited to a handful of colors.

So what’s the problem with that, you ask? I mean,I’m happy to use the high contrast theme elsewhere in Windows, so what’s the big deal?  For starters, their “High Contrast” theme is terrible. There is no syntax coloring or styling. It is plain, white text on a black background. It is a goddamn travesty. But the thing that bugs me most is, someone made a decision to take this choice away from me, making my work harder, and forcing me to endure a sub-optimal experience, reserved only for visually impaired users. Bravo Microsoft. Your good intentions kinda suck.

It’s not just me. Lots of people have the same problem, and not just VI users either. Here’s Microsoft’s official stance on this long existing problem..

https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/15287/visual-studio-forces-the-user-to-use-its-high-cont.html

Thank you for your feedback! The Visual Studio team has determined that this issue will not be addressed in the upcoming release. We understand the desire to have VS use a different theme from the system. To support customers who rely on high contrast and give them a single experience, we believe the the accessibility for visual Studio is paramount in this instance. We will continue to evaluate it for future releases. Thank you for helping us build a better Visual Studio!

So basically they’re saying “tough shit”.

So what is a programmer to do? Well there is a registry hack that I’ve used for a few generations of Visual Studio (like I said this is not a new issue). The hack essentially overwrites the crap “High Contrast” theme with the lovely “Dark” theme in the registry.

UPDATED – Confirmed working on VS 2019 Community and others..
Simplified instructions (old instructions below)

  1. Close Visual Studio (if open).
  2. Press Windows + R, and type regedit in the text box and click OK. This will run RegEdit!
  3. Click on HKEY_USERS, and select File -> Load Hive.
  4. Navigate to this location; C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\16.0_????????
  5. Select “privateregistry.bin”, and give the new Hive a nice name, like “VS2018PrivateRegistry” (without quotes).
  6. You will now see the loaded Hive under HKEY_USERS node, and you can navigate to the key here; HKEY_USERS\VS2019PrivateRegistry\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\16.0_????????_Config\Themes\
  7. Right click and export this key; HKEY_USERS\VS2019PrivateRegistry\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\16.0_????????_Config\Themes\{1ded0138-47ce-435e-84ef-9ec1f439b749}
  8. Open the new, exported .reg file in your favorite text editor.
  9. Find and replace the GUID of the “Dark” theme, with the GUID of the “High Contrast” theme. Find: ({1ded0138-47ce-435e-84ef-9ec1f439b749}) and Replace with: ({a5c004b4-2d4b-494e-bf01-45fc492522c7})
  10. Save the edited .reg file and double click it to import back into the registry.
  11. Unload the Hive; File -> Unload Hive. Important otherwise VS won’t run.
  12. Fire up Visual Studio and you should now have the Dark Theme activated. Note: The theme selector in preference will still be disabled.

————————————————

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14305176/how-do-i-use-visual-studio-2012-dark-theme-with-windows-8-high-contrast-theme

  1. Export this registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0_Config\Themes{1ded0138-47ce-435e-84ef-9ec1f439b749} (this should the key of the Dark theme)
  2. In the exported file replace the GUID of the Dark Theme ({1ded0138-47ce-435e-84ef-9ec1f439b749}) with the GUID of the High Contrast theme ({a5c004b4-2d4b-494e-bf01-45fc492522c7}):
  3. Import the reg file

This worked like a charm up until Visual Studio 2017, but they have moved the config settings out of the registry and into %AppData%. The config is stored in a private registry that can be loaded and edited in RegEdit. The themes are stored in the private registry and can be edited the same way as the old, working hack.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41119996/where-does-visual-studio-2017-rc-store-its-config

Fortunately, you can use regedit.exe to load a private hive. You need to select the HKEY_USERS node, and click the File > Load Hive… menu. You select the privateregistry.bin file [Editors note: located in; C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_????????\] , give a name to the hive (I entered “VS2017PrivateRegistry”) and now you can see the 15.0_Config key populated as usual.

Once you have the Hive loaded into RegEdit, you can navigate to the key here;

HKEY_USERS\VS2017PrivateRegistry\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_????????_Config\Themes\

Now the hack would be..

  1. Export te “Dark” theme registry key: HKEY_USERS\VS2017PrivateRegistry\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_????????_Config\Themes\{1ded0138-47ce-435e-84ef-9ec1f439b749}
  2. Replace the GUID of the “Dark” theme ({1ded0138-47ce-435e-84ef-9ec1f439b749}) with the GUID of the “High Contrast” theme ({a5c004b4-2d4b-494e-bf01-45fc492522c7})
  3. Import the reg file

Note:  Be sure to UNLOAD the Hive once you’ve applied the registry hack. Otherwise, Visual Studio wont run.

Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to see this as a non-issue.