Android and iOS phones let you enlarge images on the screen, adjust the display of colours, or enable text-to-voice.
Smartphone features for the visually impaired
Our instructions apply to modern smartphones. For devices 5 years and older, these features may work differently or not be included.
Android
Display settings can be found in the Accessibility section. To access them, go to your phone settings and enter "accessibility" in the search bar.
Depending on your phone, the location and names of certain options may differ
Text-to-voice
TalkBack voices whatever you select on the screen. When enabled, navigation changes: you select elements on the screen by tapping or swiping, and the program reads out what's written on them. To activate an area to read, double-tap anywhere on the screen.
Colour correction
Colour correction changes the colour theme of your phone depending on what you need. You can also change the display to two colours: black, white and their different shades.
Colour inversion
When enabled, black elements will turn white and white elements turn black.
Screen magnifier
The magnifying glass lets you enlarge images on the screen by stretching your two fingers. A button will appear on the screen that you can press to zoom in.
What to do if your phone doesn't have these settings?
Use apps from Google Play:
- Color Blind Pal– helps people with colour blindness distinguish colours
- Daltonizer– applies colour filters
- SeeColorson Samsung smartphones helps you select and install an individual colour profile
iOS
Options are located in the Accessibility section of your phone's settings.
VoiceOver: text-to-voice
VoiceOver speaks the selected item on the screen. When enabled, the navigation changes: to select and voice an element, tap it or swipe to select, and double-tap anywhere on the screen to activate the feature.
Zoom
A screen magnifier lets you enlarge images on the screen.
Display & text size
Lets you adjust the legibility of text and increase its contrast, as well as adjust the display colours.
Spoken Content
This option lets you voice elements on the screen when pressed.
Browser scale settings
You can increase the size of page contents in your browser settings. We don't recommend increasing magnification over 150%, or the site becomes difficult to use.
Our instructions can be used with the most popular mobile browsers. In other browsers, the settings can be found in approximately the same place as in Chrome.
Chrome
- Open the browser menu and go to the settings
- Go to the Accessibility section
- Select the scale
Safari
- Go to your phone settings and find Safari
- Go to the "Page zoom" section
- Select the scale
Samsung
- Open the browser menu and go to the settings
- Go to the "Webpage view and scrolling" section
- Select the scale