Android Low Vision: High Contrast Text

Today, we're going to check out the high contrast text feature, which makes text easier to see on busy or colorful backgrounds. Let's see how it works.

To turn on our high contrast text, we'll first head over to our settings app, which is right here on our home screen. We'll just tap on settings to open it. Great.

Now that our settings app is open, the next step is to open accessibility settings, so let's find accessibility in this list of options. We'll just scroll down, and here it is. We'll just tap right here on our accessibility button.

Now let's look under the display heading to find display size and text. On your phone, this option might say text and display. This is where we're going to find our high contrast text button, so let's tap to select it.

Next, we'll scroll down to find our high contrast text button. We'll just go down the list, and on this phone, it's right at the bottom of our list, so we'll tap it to turn it on. Simple as that. Our high contrast text has been turned on. This feature changes gray or colored text to black or white, and it adds a contrasting outline when text is on a busy or colored background. This helps reduce eyestrain by making some of the text easier on the eyes.

Now let's do some exploring with this feature turned on. We'll start by going to our home screen, and to do this, we'll move down to the bottom of the screen to find our home button right in the center of our navigation bar. Or, if you prefer to use gestures, swipe up with one finger from the bottom of the screen to get to the home screen.

For more info on gesture navigation or how to switch from gesture navigation to the navigation bar, check out the resources by scrolling down below this workshop. For now, we'll tap on our home button inside the navigation bar.

Okay, now we're on our home screen, and here we can see that the text under each icon has a contrasting outline to help it stand out from the background. To see how this works in an app, let's find our weather app, which on this phone, is in the first row of apps on the home screen. We'll tap on it to open it.

And here we are. On this screen, the text is displayed against a colored background, and it stands out better with a black outline around the numbers and letters.

Okay, let's try another app, like calendar. So we'll go back to our home screen by tapping on the home button, and now we'll move to the bottom of the screen and swipe up with one finger to open our list of apps.

On this screen, we might notice that the text below our icons doesn't appear to be much different from usual. The high contrast text feature really shows up best against a busy or colored background.

Now, let's locate our calendar app, which is around the top of our list, and we'll tap on it to open it.

There. The text is outlined and easier to see here as well. It's great that this feature makes these changes throughout our entire device.

There's no need to set it up for each app that we use. Thanks for learning with me today. Until next time.