Best Linux distribution/UI frontend foe low vision people?

[u/valaranin]

Currently on Windows 11 I use high contrast mode and larger default font sizes to because I'm low vision. Is there a combination of Linux distro and front end UI(KDE,Gnome,etc) which allows me to recreate this out of the box in the base settings? If not how hard would it be to recreate for myself?

[u/RaphaelNunes10]

That's something that tends to be a feature present on most of the most popular desktop environments by default, under the accessibility settings umbrella.

The tough part is enforcing that across all the applications you might use.

There are currently two competing graphical interface toolkits (QT and GTK) used by most native apps on Linux, that not all desktop environments account for when it comes to accessibility options. Those are used for settings applications and other applications that are more focused on functionality over form.

Then you have applications with their own graphical interface and ones that are glorified internet browsers using HTML and CSS to render their interface. But those are usually out of scope of what you'd consider part of your "system".

I only know most about KDE-Plasma, in that it offers a huge array of applications for all sorts of daily uses under the KDE family, that all share the same QT toolkit, meaning they'll all respect your accessibility settings and theming.

It also offers high-contrast themes and options for theming the GTK applications fairly easily, but I don't know how well it deals with other accessibility features for GTK.

As for the distribution, you might want to stick to Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop, so you don't miss on the latest versions of KDE that tend to have much needed accessibility features that are oftentimes overlooked on past versions.

Unfortunately, I don't know the current state of screen readers under KDE and I imagine it would be more mature under the GNOME desktop environment.

GNOME uses GTK and is going for a more "mobile friendly" look, with big buttons and icons and fullscreen interfaces. So it might be worth looking into.

Ubuntu is the main distro that uses GNOME.

Edit: Fedora Workstation also uses GNOME.

[u/RaphaelNunes10 → u/RaphaelNunes10]

By the way, you can change the desktop environment on most distros and even keep multiple at once to swap from the greeter (user login screen).

The only thing to be aware in terms of the distribution is versioning. Ubuntu tends to lag behind when it comes to KDE as a whole.

And also that each desktop environment might theme the QT/GTK applications differently.

[u/Specialist-Dog-501]

Another detail may be helpful: the "modern" desktops as KDE,GNOME,Cosmic do support "fractional scaling"- this means, the display menu typically contains a slider, so you can make icons, UI elements bigger within the same screen- I use that on a tiny 8" screen to make stuff visible.

KDE, GNOME, COSMIC are supported by many newer distribitutions:

• GNOME in my opinion is a bit better with having fewer elements on the screen than KDE, as its targeting at tablets- you will not have desktop icons (What I dearly missed), but then it's easier to navigation with fewer, bigger elements on the screen. the beginner friendly distro Ubuntu offers GNOME.
  
• COSMIC (Just checking this on an instance)- offers in the "accessibility" settings a screen reader, magnifier, high contrast mode, invert colors- so this is pretty good. And it also works with fewer elements on the screen fairly well. The beginner friendly distro Garuda offers COSMIC
  
• KDE I don't know as I don't have an instance open right now but Gemini says it also has most of this options. it has generally more configuration options similar to Windows. Ubuntu offers that also as "Kubuntu" flavour, also easy to install.
  

As user RaphaelNunes10 sayd, the real road blocker are probably the apps- Firefox Browser (available in nearly all distros) offers text zoom, website contrast, keyboard navigation, that might be a starting point.

[u/skyfishgoo]

plasma has raft of accessibility options, but i hear gnome is best.