"Large Text" accessibility option cannot be turned off. Text is too large
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
gnome-settings-daemon (Ubuntu) |
Confirmed
|
High
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
SUMMARY
There is a little "accessibility" menu in the top right of my screen. If I click it, there is a switch saying "Large Text". It is enabled. If I click it to turn it off, it switches off, but nothing changes. If I then log out and back in, then click the accessibility menu, I find "Large Text" has been switched back on.
If in the "accessibility" menu I click "Accessibility Settings", it brings up a pane in the Settings app ("org.gnome.
Additionally, all the text on my screen is too large. It is making it hard to use the computer.
NOTE: I would appreciate a rapid response in terms of "what information do you need me to gather to ensure the bug can be diagnosed properly". I have not fully debugged yet (I have not messed with gsettings, etc) because I don't want to destroy the bug state before gathering the appropriate diagnostics.
CONTEXT / DETAILED EXPLANATION
I have a hunch the Ubuntu installer is partially to blame, so I'm going to describe the events leading up to the problem.
Yesterday I got a new ThinkPad. This ThinkPad is "1.5x retina". That means it is 1080p (1920x1200 to be exact) in a laptop form factor and in order for things to look "normal size" it must display at 150%. The copy of Windows on the laptop was configured for 150% display scale for example. I took the ThinkPad out of the box and immediately wiped the Windows partition and installed 22.04 LTS from a USB stick. This worked but I had difficulty because the installer was running at 1x and so all the text was very small. My eyesight is not very good and I can read regular computer text but anything smaller than regular I have trouble. Once I got into the OS though I could set the display scale to 150% using Displays-
My 22.04 LTS worked well but a friend told me it's better to use regular updates rather than LTS, so I wiped my 22.04 LTS partition and installed 23.10.1 from a USB stick. This time I noticed something in the installer. The installer had an accessibility menu (little T pose man icon) and one of the options was "Large Text". Perfect! I clicked "Large Text" and my complaint about the text being too small to read in the installer was fixed. I installed 23.10 and booted. When I got to the login screen on first boot I noticed the accessibility menu again so I selected "Large Text" so the text on the login screen would not be so small. Then I logged in. I immediately set my display scale to 150% as before.
Inside 23.10, I quickly noticed that all the text was larger than I expected. Web pages that fit on my screen before did not anymore. A specific thing I noticed was the Mouse & Keyboard screen, the titlebar tabs were crowded where they had not been in 22.04 (see screenshot). It was then I noticed the anamolous, forced-on "Large Text" in the accessibility menu.
Remembering that I had set "Large Text" in the login screen, I tried logging out, turning off login screen "Large Text" and logging back in. The login screen "Large Text" is remembered correctly and on re-entering login large text remains off. But it did not help with "Large Text" being stuck on in the logged-in Wayland session.
I think 150% and "Large Text" are stacking and the two are combining to make everything too big. My hunch is that either enabling "Large Text" in the installer, or enabling "Large Text" in the login screen on first login, set "Large Text" in a strange way which is making it stuck on.
EXPECTED BEHAVIOR
It is unexpected to me that setting "Large Text" in either the installer, or the login screen, has an effect on the logged-in session. If setting scale/accessibility options in a logged-in session does not flow backward into the login screen, then I would not expect accessibility options in the login screen to flow forward into the logged-in session. In any case, a setting which cannot be turned off and turns itself back on is obviously unacceptable.
RELATED PROBLEM
If I click the accessibility menu and choose "Accessibility Settings" at the top there is an "Accessibility Menu" option (I have a screenshot but it is only letting me attach one thing). It says "Display menu for settings in top bar". This option is turned off. But the accessibility menu is visible. Turning this checkbox on, or off, has no effect. I do not know if this is the same problem or a different problem. My expected behavior is if a checkbox does nothing it should be removed.
---
ProblemType: Bug
ApportVersion: 2.27.0-0ubuntu5
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckR
CloudArchitecture: x86_64
CloudID: none
CloudName: none
CloudPlatform: none
CloudSubPlatform: config
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 23.10
InstallationDate: Installed on 2023-10-18 (1 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 23.10.1 "Mantic Minotaur" - Release amd64 (20231016.1)
Package: gnome-settings-
PackageArchitec
ProcEnviron:
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
PATH=(custom, no user)
SHELL=/bin/bash
TERM=xterm-
XDG_RUNTIME_
ProcVersionSign
Tags: mantic wayland-session
Uname: Linux 6.5.0-9-generic x86_64
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dip lpadmin plugdev sudo users
_MarkForUpload: True
Here is the screenshot of the accessibility menu switch that does nothing.