Index

Introduction

For many years, accessibility options were only provided by 3rd party software suites. Many that need access accommodations are already familiar with applications such as Fusion, ZoomText or JAWS. But recent generations of the Windows OS has put forth some effort to develop their accessibility options right into the Windows OS. This article will go over how to enable and configure some of these options. Please note that because Windows is a platform, software programs installed into Windows may not necessarily utilize these features completely, so it may not be a perfect solution. You may also need to experiment with these settings to fit your needs.

Dark Mode & Night Light

If you have a sensitivity to bright lights or screens, setting Windows into Dark Mode might help.

From the Windows Start Menu, click Settings (Gear Icon) → Personalization

Open

You can also disable Transparency effects and change your accent colors here if they’re causing visual clutter or to suit your needs.

Night Light

Night Light is found under Settings → System → Display → Night Light

This will display warmer colors instead of whiter/bluer colors on your display and may be helpful to those who suffer blue light migraines but perform jobs where they spend most of their time at their computer.

You can have this always on, or schedule it to turn on at specific times, such as after dark.

Open

Windows Resolution and Scaling

For those struggling with reduced or deteriorating eyesight, these options can help increase the size of menus and fonts in Windows.

You can reach display settings by:

A) Right-click anywhere on your open desktop wallpaper → Display Settings

Open

B) From the Windows Start Menu, Click Settings (Gear Icon) → System → Display.

Under the Scale & layout section, you can increase the Scale for your display settings, which will increase the size of text, apps, and other visual elements in Windows.

You can also change the Resolution. Lowering your Resolution will make many things larger, but may lower its visual quality.

Open

Windows Accessibility Settings

Under Settings → Accessibility, there are many settings you can change to accommodate your needs. Major accessibility features that you might find helpful are Magnifier, which provides screen magnification, and Narrator, which provides screen reading natively in Windows.

Text Size - Make Your Text Even Bigger

Let’s say for the most part you can see icons and programs fine, but struggle with small text in Windows menus. You can increase just the font text sizes in Windows here.

Open

What this won’t do is necessarily change the font in various software programs that are installed in Windows, as software application programmers can choose to inherit system settings from Windows or may have their own built-in display and rendering options.

Visual Effects - Scrollbars, Transparency, and Animations

If you struggle with scrollbars that tend to collapse out of the way when not in use, you can enable Always show scrollbars in Windows here. There are also transparency and animation effects that can be disabled for those that find them distracting or have sensory issues with Windows elements and animation motions.

Open

Mouse Pointer and touch - Customize the Mouse Pointer for Visibility

If you struggle with keeping track of the mouse pointer on the screen, you can alter the style, size, icon/image for the pointer, and enable features like a mouse pointer finder hotkey or trails to help you keept rack of it. If you’re on PC or laptop with a touch screen, you can enable some of these for where you touch thes creen as well:

Open

Text Cursor - Customize the Text Cursor for Visibility

If you have trouble keeping track of the tiny text cursor when typing, you can edit it here. You can change the size, color, thickness, and add indicator elements. These settings will often work inside web browsers and office programs as well.

Open

Magnifier - Magnify All or Parts of the Screen (incl Screen Reading)

For the visually impaired, Magnify is a great tool that will Zoom in all of or parts of the screen. It can be turned off and on with shortcuts (Windows Key + the Plus Sign(+) and turned off with Windows + Esc. Please note many of these features have shortcuts you can enable and disable on the fly, outlined in their settings section. Some can be customized.

There are quite a few settings you can customize in Magnifier. This section won’t go over all of them, but you can experiment with these to set up your environment the way you like.

Open

You can set it to magnify the whole screen, create a docked area that will display bits of the screen in a fixed area at a time, or Lens view that will magnify in a boxed area around your cursor.

Open

Screen Reading

The default voice for the screen reader here is the original Microsoft David, but there are other voiceover options you can download, such as the Natural HD option Microsoft Ava. This only takes a few minutes, depending on your network and computer speed. You can edit the speed of the voiceover as well.

Open

Please note that this is mainly for reading areas that you mouseover and may not work in all applications or situations. If you want full Screen Reading, please skip down to the Narrator section, which will share your reader voice selection here.

More about Magnifier: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2156369

Color Filters - Modify Display to Support Colorblindness

The Color option is useful for those with various forms of colorblindness or other visual impairments. Like most Windows accessibility settings, it can be enabled as togglable with a shortcut key.

Open

Contrast Themes - High contrast Windows Themes

Contrast themes can provide more pronounced window borders and other contrast settings.

Open

Narrator - Windows Screen Reader

The Windows Narrator feature has many settings and includes a complete guide built in. When you turn it on, it will automatically launch an introduction window and the Narrator Home screen, which will help you navigate the Narrator platform. The default combination to enable Narrator is Windows key + Control + Enter.

In the settings window, you can modify the voice, verbosity, and settings like whether Narrator will announce what you’re typing, whether Narrator moves with your focused window, and giving you options to include a Braille display on screen for those with some sight.

Narrator can be set to run before or after sign-in:

Open

Open

Hearing Settings - Options for Assisted Audio

The Audio, Hearing Devices, and Captions options can provide mono channel settings, Bluetooth connections to Bluetooth-enabled hearing aids, or captions to assist with audio-assisted individuals. Please note the PC must have Bluetooth connectivity to use this Bluetooth functionality.

Open

Interaction Settings - Using Windows without Full Use of Hands

This section may provide settings that can assist with users that have mobility trouble utilizing a traditional keyboard and mouse.

Speech

This section provides options to turn on voice control for apps on your PC. Your PC will need a microphone to use this feature, and there are options to start voice access before signing on. When this feature is turned on, it will launch a calibration that will walk you through configuring and training you how to use it.

Open

Open

This adds a control panel at the top of Windows to control speech settings from.

Keyboard

In this section, you can customize keyboard settings for situations like reduced hand-eye coordination or mobility. You can;

• Enable an on-screen keyboard that you could use with a mouse or touch screen.

• Enable features like sticky keys which will allow you to use multi-key shortcuts one key at a time.

• Enable and configure Filter keys to ignore repeated or light keystrokes for hands that shake.

• Toggle keys to play a sound when certain keys are pressed.

• Toggle on underlined access keys to help with navigation in menus.

Open

Mouse

The Mouse Pointer and touch settings will help you customize cursors and pointers on screen. The interaction mouse settings offer other options like pointer snapping, hide pointer while typing, click speed, or using the keyboard to move the mouse pointer.

Open

Eye control

You can install an eye tracker to a PC to utilize eye tracking and voice commands to navigate Windows.

Open