Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

19 Nov 2020, 10:45 a.m.

Thank You

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2020 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Today I finally fiddled with the Universal Access settings in GNOME to:

  • make the mouse cursor bigger, and add a contrasting outline, so it's easier to see where it is
  • add a visible alert every time there's a sound/audio alert
  • increase default text size everywhere
It took maybe 90 seconds total and was really easy. I went through some internalized ageism and ableism as I did this. Now I've done it and my computer is easier to use, and I am grateful to all the people who came before me and laid this path to make it easier for me to use. Thank you to everyone who has ever worked on desktop usability and accessibility.