Yosemite font size is too small for vision impaired

Apple training our eyes for Apple Watch? Seriously ...

See text in link with image of Apple Watch below. Although it is an image of a tiny display displayed on my display (15" MBP Retina using the default "Best for Display" resolution), I find text in watch image with bright yellow band, a little more decipherable when compared with text displayed in Apple's Aperture software (list of Projects in left panel). Text size is about the same, but better contrast in Watch image.

Hate to tell you this is the future. Or maybe not. The younger generation will likely have worse vision at a much earlier age because of of all the handheld gadgets they've been using since an early age. 😕

http://www.macworld.com/article/2862580/what-to-expect-from-apple-in-2015.html

Iagree! I i have łatę 2006 iMac and would like to buy new Retina iMac but I am afraid that i will not be able to read anything. I hav vision disability and I have chosen Macintosh because of its accessibility features. retina iMac has extremely small font and even using zoom is not so easy. I must buy a new computer but I am so afraid of 5k retina+Yosemite. I think that we can create such campaig. Apple must listen to its customers!

Yes hopefully Apple will listen.

Currently I am using iMac retina as a test drive and always it is in the one lower resolution than Best (Retina). Then it is more readable and easier to my eye.

Not sure of whether this is only font size issue, they changed font rendering or font thickness and contrast I guess. I have a scientific software with 2012 and 2014 version installed. 2012 version uses Mac older style fonts, and 2014 new font. When I open a text with their editors, with these two versions with the same size fonts, 2012 version is crystal clear with respect to: fonts are fatter looking and darker looking, thus easier to read. So Yosemite font adaptation is wrong for Mac, not only font size, in my opinion and experience. Interestingly they had this issues in iPhone and they had to put an option "bolder" after they got so many feedback. So in a way they listen to the critics and feedback, but in other way they do the same mistake or want to do their own way. I guess they simply wanted to have a change, but they should have talked to the experts.

Yes, as you say, many of these issues were resolved in iOS by adding,

• Larger Text with Dynamic Type which includes an adjustable slider and

• Bold Text

to the Settings Menu.

The vision impaired can only live in hope Apple!

One easy way to increase the global font size relative to physical size is to scale the resolution within System Preferences/Displays/Display/Resolution Scaled. You might be able to re-inflate a 16 point font size up towards the physical 5.6mm it should be.

Apple's use of the increased resolution to deflate 15pt or 12pt text to to a physically 10 or 7 point text is uncomfortable, frustrating, and confusing.

Unfortunately people like myself who are classified as having low vision (moderate loss), rely heavily on adjustable font size while maintaining a high resolution. Any loss of definition or resolution is like going back to using DOS with white fuzzy text on a black screen in 1992! Some of you wouldn't have been around then!🙂

I'm still running Snow Leopard on my iMac and want desperately to upgrade to Yosemite, not least of all because Apple no longer provide software updates for 10.6.8, and this raises security issues. However I'm loathe to update if I then walk into a wall of problems with text that's too small to read.

Maybe I'll have to migrate to Voiceover?

Yes, I agree.

Messing with the resolution caused new problems. I returned to Best for Display, and instead had to "fix" things with a bunch of kludges described elsewhere.

As for going to Voiceover, I assume you were being ironic, but it makes a good point.

All these years, the Mac empowered all of us.

Now, with Yosemite (absent a bunch of kludges), it is instead emasculating many of us!

Regards, Nate 😀

I agree as well -- the software "resolution reduction" kluge that re-inflates the smaller types is somewhat fuzzy, but it does sort of give a way of making the numerical point sizes of the type match the point sizes of physically printed material. Physical point size is the height from the tops of the text to the bottom of the descenders, as in the characters in "TgTgTgƒƒƒƒƒƒ", in units of 1/72th of an inch. The way Apple calls a 2mm font (on my Macbook) in Finder a 'Text Size 12' adds confusion to any discussion of font size--In print it would be a miniscule 5.6point font. If you need 12millimeter tall characters to work effectively, you should be able to call for a system font size of 34 points.

My 15" Macbook Pro should be rendering 12 point type as 4.2mm high, or 21 of the native 197 dot pitch pixels high, but instead it appears to be rendering it as 10 pixels high. Ideally a 12 point font should be 12/72" high on the screen at 100%, and should be rendered at the full dot pitch of the screen.

You can definitely upgrade to Mavericks, which is perfectly working for me on my macbook pro retina. The issue raised for me when I was testing the new iMac retina, which has Yosemite as default. Apparently Apple does not allow installing even 1 year old OSX to a new computer, otherwise I would install Mavericks on it to get previous font (rendering). I already installed LucidaGrande but it is only part of the solution. I need thicker/fatter and darker font rendering as before.

Thanks for everyone's replies.

I decided to simply go to Apple's feedback page and submit my concerns, rather than keep repeating myself here in the vain hope that someone from Apple might stumble upon our discussion.. I pasted in a link to this discussion thread.

I would encourage EVERYONE who has posted in this thread with concerns to do the same thing!

http://www.apple.com/feedback

I posted my comments under OSX Apps > MacOSX, then there's a window to click on for Universal Access/Accessibility.

Maybe there'll be a software update in Yosemite in a couple of months time providing adjustable font sizes?

We can only live in hope.

Interestingly enough I found the opposite solution worked for me (unless I read your post wrong).

After loading Yosemite, like many of you, I was thrown by the small font size overall. In fact, the whole home screen, pop-windows, toolbar all seemed weirdly undersized. After reading this thread and others I wrote a complaint to Apple Feedback because from the 3 pages of posts, some of which were quite technical in terms of work around solutions, I wrongly assumed a simple fix was unavailable.

Then, just after I'd sent my complaint, I noticed an icon on my toolbar at the top of the screen, which looked like a display. It opens the display preferences, and I chose "Best for Display". As for me, and what I was having an issue with, this was an immediate solution. All the fonts were bigger, the pop-up windows bigger.

Problem solved- at least for me.

I suggest others try it and see if it works for them.

Thanks for your suggestion - it would be helpful if you would tell us:

1) what program you were in when you saw this icon;

2) what the icon looked like; and

3) whether or not you were able to perform the same step in all other programs.

Thank you in advance for answering.

Best wishes, Nate 😀

If you, Buzzman, are referring to "Displays" under System Preferences (in whose window we see a screen icon for Displays), it appears the default after "Resolution" already is "Best for display." So for me there's nothing to tweak.

If you are referring to another setting, details would be useful.

Thanks.

muttle,

I note from your original post that there are now 119 (and counting), 'I have this question too'!

It's good to know that people do actually go back and read the original post in a thread. (That's not meant as a criticism of anyone who has commented).

Let's hope they've all voiced their concerns here,

http://www.apple.com/feedback

OOPS!!

Apologies to muttle and spuddle!

Previous post was meant for spuddle. I'm muddling my spuddle's and muttle's.😊