Make Windows 11 easier to see, hear, and use

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ISSUE 20.50 • 2023-12-11 ACCESSIBILITY By Lance Whitney Whether or not you have specific disabilities or limitations, you can take advantage of a vari
[See the full post at: Make Windows 11 easier to see, hear, and use]

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Norio, Lars220, abbodi86, fisher75, DLivesInTexas, lmacri, snissen

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Captions: I learned last week that YouTube videos in Russian or Arabic etc are legible when I turn on Captions. Google/YouTube converts the video captions to English for me! Hurrah! Chris

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

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<b>I’m in my 80’s so I’ve had lots of years to learn some of your fine recommendations.  Even so, I learned new information from your article, and note Microsoft has made many code and shortcut service tweaks over the years to improve accessibility, for which I’m grateful. </b>

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Lance Whitney

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I cannot find the Mouse under Accessability.

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In the Settings App (Gear icon) click on Accessibility.
Expand the options by clicking on the “>” on the right for more choices.

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I appreciate your article on visual help. One thing I use a lot is MS edge and immersive reader, it is a great help.

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Is there a way to simply increase the contrast of text, without affecting the colors of other display elements? The current fad/trend of using medium-to-light gray text on a white-to-very light gray background is insufferable to my eyes. The MacOS has a setting for Increase Contrast (which also reduces transparency effects) for text only, it seems. But I can’t find something similar in Windows 10/11. I would like shades of gray text mapped to solid black. I could then deal with the not-so-white backgrounds.

The Microsoft Office 2016+ options screen is a good example of small, thin fonts that are not-quite black on a white or gray background.

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Settings App\Personalization
You might try fooling with Background, Colors, Themes, and Dynamic Lighting. There may be a setting or combination of settings that could help.
Display Brightness is another option.

I use a “Light” mode – gives a white background with black text. And display brightness turned down keepa it from being glaring.

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Useful but doesn’t cover visual things lost in moving Win 10 to 11, in particular, resizing the taskbar which is dead easy in Win 10. What I have seen is stuff about fiddlng with the register, a thing I am not good at.

Terry

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Great article.

There is also a freeware program called A Ruler for Windows that has a feature that lets you have a Reading Guide on your screen.  Its works like having a ruler edge which helps you read through lines of text on a printed page.

I wrote the program myself, and thought it would be of interest to you.

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Lance,
Enjoyed your article. As a teacher of the visually impaired, I’ve used most of these accommodations with children that have visual impairments. My biggest wish has always been for Windows to create a way to bold the fonts. This would allow children to read without making words so large they impact the rest of the screen. Bolding fonts would also make it so many children could read comfortably without having to resort to the added challenge of using a screen magnifier.
Keep up the good work! Thanks!

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