I came across this merge request about enabling grayscale mode in colorblind settings after I saw the “Noteworthy” label for the Add “Center (Strict)” in Mouse Tracking Mode in Zoom/Magnifier. That “Noteworthy” label piqued my interest to check out the closed merge requests and that’s how “enabling grayscale mode” interests me.
So here’s my use-case. I want to use the game called “Perspective” as an example:
This is the game of Perspective that is in color. Here’s the grayscale version.
For anyone who is colorblind, the red-orange block can hurt you.
And oh! Forgot my use-case. This will allow me to test colorblind modes in video games when doing an accessibility review or doing a let’s play (commentary).
So even though the merge request has been merged, I have a suggestion. Why not have a separate animation/transition speed for changing from normal to grayscale? We already have a global animation speed for animating the switching between workspaces and all that, but it would be nice to set a transition speed for let’s say 3 seconds. With the help of the keyboard shortcut, once I activate it, it will smoothly change to grayscale and disabling it will simply change them back to normal.
Someone in the Keyboard Shortcut feature request did suggest that grayscale mode should be moved to the Desktop Effects section although I remember that Android calls the grayscale mode a “Digital Wellbeing” which removes the colors from the screen and makes it look gray instead. I don’t think “grayscale” has anything to do with accessibility. As an accessibility analyst who does web accessibility work for a living, “accessibility” deals with WCAG compliance (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and “usability” deals with user experience or user-friendliness. I’m not sure if grayscale mode can fall in “usability” either from a web accessibility standpoint, but maybe have it in the “Display Settings”? I think that makes the most sense.
Having said that, does it make sense to start a new bug report that talks about adding in the transition speed for the grayscale mode?