Making your screen more readable

This section of our Assistive Technology Guide explains how you can make your screen more readable. You may want to change the appearance of the screen for different reasons, including:

• Increasing the contrast and size of your display to see better
• Using colour filters to help with colour blindness
• Reading with varying types of font and spacing to help you comprehend text
• Minimising visual distractions

Desktop

Operating systems, such as Windows and Mac, provide built-in magnifying functions as well as options that allow you to tailor your viewing experience to your specific needs.

Windows

• Use Magnifier on Windows to make things easier to see (Built-in)
• Make Windows easier to see (Built-in)
• Use colour filters in Windows 10 (Built-in)

Mac

• Make it easier to see what is on the screen of your Mac (Built-in)
• Use HoverText on Mac (Built-in)

Mobile

Mobile phones include settings for magnifying and customising the appearance of your device's interface.

Android

• Magnification - Android accessibility help (Built-in)
• Appearance settings on Android (Built-in)
  • Font size & display
  • High contrast
  • Dark theme/colour inversion
  • Colour correction

iPhone

• Zoom in on the iPhone screen (Built-in)
• Adjust the display and text size on iPhone (Built-in)

iPad

• Zoom in on the iPad screen (Built-in)
• Adjust the display and text size on iPad (Built-in)

Web

Modern web browsers can zoom in and have ways of customising the display through extensions and themes.

Chrome

• Change text, image, and video sizes on Chrome (Built-in)
• Customize and Personalize Chrome on your desktop computer with Extensions, Themes and Apps (Extensions and themes)
• Accessibility – A Powerful Web Assistant (Extension, free)

Firefox

• Font size and zoom - increase the size of web pages on Firefox (Built-in)
• Display and appearance on Firefox (Built-in)

Edge

• Accessibility features in Microsoft Edge (Built-in)

Safari

• Zoom in on web pages in Safari on Mac (Built-in)

Reading modes

Apps and browsers offer reader modes that simplify the user interface so you can focus on reading. For those who like to use Microsoft's Immersive Reader – Edge Browser has this built-in as its reader mode.

Firefox

• Firefox Reader View for clutter-free web pages (Built-in)

Safari

• Safari Reader for viewing a webpage article formatted for easy reading (Built-in)

Chrome

• Reader Mode Extension for Chrome (Extension)

Accessibility features

Despite changing the display in your operating system's settings, you may discover that a specific application or website you are using is not displaying in a way that is suitable for you. You may be able to modify settings on the website or app to accommodate this. An online search using the keywords "accessibility settings" is the easiest approach to find out if the programme can change the display for accessibility.