Feature request: Make symbols easier to see

[ADG11]

Use Cases

The symbols in the upper right of the letters on the alpha keyboard are tiny and very hard to see.

Proposal

Any chance of either increasing their size, increasing their contrast so they stand out more, or both?

Thank you!

References

No response

[favdish]

+1. I had to create a screenshot of the keyboard and enlarge the PNG to see what's going on 😬

[SerpicoSal]

+1. Please have mercy on your users with older eyes or impaired vision. My days of using 5pt text in my xterms are sadly over. ;^)
I'd recommend adding an Accessibility tag to this issue

I tried all the US English keyboard themes, light and dark, but the symbols in the upper right on all keys are always rendered in a lighter gray than the key text colors and the symbols are in a much smaller font pitch. Discerning between a single quote and double quote is tricky. Curly braces look the same as parentheses. Same between semicolons and colons.

Proposal

Offer a keyboard layout (QWERTY high contrast?) which has the keyboard symbols in the same font color as the letter keys, plus have the symbols emboldened. Slight increase in the font size for the symbols.

or

Can this FR be implemented with a Keyboard theme instead? Something less obnoxious than the colors in the "High Contrast Yellow" theme? I haven't found any info here about how to create keyboard themes; is this something I can help with? Wondering if this file could be cloned and modified with a new name and more sane colors could be used?
android-keyboard/java/src/org/futo/inputmethod/latin/uix/theme/presets/HighContrastYellow.kt
The symbols are much more legible in this theme, but the colors are painful to look at.

[Dobypeti]

I found this is a duplicate of #769, though this issue has more activity

[chileverde]

I am the author of Adjustable Hint Size for Long-Press Characters #769 (Nov 5, 2024), which was closed as a duplicate of this request. My request was tagged Low Priority. I see that the current request is NOT tagged Low Priority, but rather is tagged Accessibility and QoL. I hope that with the new tags it will get the attention it deserves. I thank those who have also commented on this needed improvement.

[JulianGro]

A little comparison showcasing the issue:
Futo:

Swiftkey:

On the Futo keyboard, some keys such as ' are unreadable.

[conradsrc]

Yeah, ideally just give users the option to theme this in the app directly. Wish I could set them to use a non-grayscale color that was more vibrant.

[chileverde]

This is a great improvement! Thank you very much. (In the meantime, I did try the high-contrast yellow theme which was too jarring for me to look at. But it's good to have that option, as well, for individuals who need the high contrast and the symbols still a little larger.)