My daughter uses a Windows PC. She has recently been diagnosed with RP, which runs in our family. For now, her symptoms are mild. She doesn't need a screen reader such as Narrator or NVDA. However, she might benefit from high contrast colors, a larger mouse pointer, or whole screen magnification. Are these features available in Windows? Can they be easily toggled on and off with a keyboard shortcut? Last time I used Windows was Win7, and switching to high contrast colors and tweaking the mouse pointer were in settings without a convenient keyboard shortcut. There was no way to do whole screen magnification without a third party tool like ZoomText. Win7 had Magnifier, but it was klunky.
Please update me on these low vision features in current Windows so I can share the info with my daughter. Thanks.
Comments
Refer to this
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-keyboard-shortcuts-for-accessibility-021bcb62-45c8-e4ef-1e4f-41b8c1fc87fd
Some resources
Hey Paul,
These links might be useful for you and your daughter. Enjoy! :)
A look at Magnifier
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/use-magnifier-to-make-things-on-the-screen-easier-to-see-414948ba-8b1c-d3bd-8615-0e5e32204198
Windows 11 Overview of Accessibility features by The Blind Life:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yQ9HUNuLeI
Thanks
Very helpful. I appreciate it.
My probably outdated experience
One thing I always liked about Windows was the way you could change how big things were on screen to pretty much suit your needs. Whereas the Mac has one or two options, you can really tailor Windows to suit. I never liked the Windows magnifier.
I also never really liked the High Contrast mode as it is just so ugly. Personally I switched to Windows dark theme which did some things, and then I would add dark themes to browsers or other apps that supported it. A lot of apps have this built in now. I also used a browser extension called Dark Reader. This is available in Chromium based browsers, as well as Firefox and even Safari. With the combination of these things I was able to make almost everything dark on Windows. For the occasion where I couldn't I would use the invert colours option. This might be part of magnifier but there is definitely a shortcut to invoke it.
I found making everything dark was probably more useful than zooming in.
Anyway this is probably not helpful as it's likely out of date but just thought I'd mention it in case.
It's all good info, Mr. Grieves
Besides, if you remember that from whenever you last used Windows, imagine it now with full screen magnifying options, plus "Contrast Themes", something both new, and old, in Windows 11.
Basically they used to be called "High Contrast Themes", which I actually remember from Windows XP, which was the last version of Windows I used when I was sighted. Now Contrast Themes are a thing, and let you edit a rediculous amount of features, including button colors, contrast, and even highlights, and a whole lot of other elements.
This sadly does nothing for me, but for those with any useful vision, I imagine it is a lot more convenient than the typical white on black, which is what I remember from XP. 🙂
Mouse pointers
I remember when I used to work on Windows. I would spend most of my day trying to find the mouse pointer. Even Extra Large seemed to be really tiny. When I realised the Mac had a slider for the mouse pointer and I could make it so big I could barely use it any more, I was immediately sold. Then when Mojave came in and the dark theme actually made almost everything on the Mac dark that really put it on another level.
Anyway I believe Windows also has a slider for the mouse pointer now.
Interesting to hear about all the new options in Windows. It does sound like these days it is a better low-vision computer than the Mac.
Back in ye old Win7 days
Agreed Mac mouse pointer slider helped sell me on moving to the Mac. Back in ye old Win7 days, I used ZoomText for mouse pointer highlighting and size, which worked quite well. I'm glad to hear many of these features work better in current Windows, ease of use, etc.
Oh yeah
Nowadays you can not only adjust the size and colors of the pointer, but you can also adjust the size, thickness, coloting, and more of the text cursor, theres other choices as well, but I don't mess with them for obvious reasons. 😇