Android Low Vision: Quick Zoom with Accessibility Button

Today we're going to check out a great way to temporarily magnify our screen using the accessibility button. This feature is built right into our phone and it lets us quickly zoom in on the screen and then zoom right back out again. Let's find out how it works.

First, we want to be sure our magnification shortcut is set up. On this phone, the shortcut has already been set up. By default the accessibility button is a small, floating button on the screen, but here it's been set to the navigation bar along the bottom edge of our screen. For more information on how to set the magnification shortcut to the accessibility button on your phone, check out the workshop in this series on magnifying the full screen using the accessibility button. And to learn how to make changes to the accessibility button, like its size and location, check out the resources by scrolling down below this workshop.

Now let's see how the quick zoom feature works using the accessibility button shortcut right on our home screen. First, we'll turn on the magnification by tapping the accessibility button right down here, at the bottom right corner of the screen.

Great, our magnification has turned on and it's running in the background ready for us to use. Note that the quick zoom feature works only when magnification is in full screen mode. You can check out another workshop in this series to learn more about switching magnification between full and partial screen.

Okay, now that we've turned on magnification, we're ready to temporarily zoom in on our screen. To turn on the quick zoom feature, we'll place and hold one finger on the screen right where we want to zoom in. You can use whichever finger is most comfortable for you. We'll use the index finger in this workshop.

So, let's do that right here. And there we go. The screen has magnified. Once we've zoomed in on the screen like this, we notice that we can only see part of the screen. To see the rest of it, we'll keep our finger on the screen and drag it around like this. As we continue to drag our finger around, the text and graphics on the screen will stay magnified.

Now, there's one more thing we can do while we're zoomed in on the screen. If we need a bit more magnification, we can use a pinching gesture to adjust it. So let's try that now.

With our index finger still placed on the screen, we'll place another finger on the screen nearby. In this workshop, we're using our thumb. And now we'll gradually move them apart by sliding them outward, to increase the magnification. Let's try to zoom in as much as we can.

Wow, that really zoomed in quite a bit. The magnification level goes up to eight times. Now let's remove our thumb from the screen. With our index finger still on the screen, we notice the more we've zoomed in, the less of the screen we can see, and we might have to move around the screen a bit to find our place.

Now, let's try decreasing the magnification. With our index finger still on the screen, let's bring our thumb back and place it on the screen, leaving some space between our fingers. We'll take our two fingers and gradually pinch them back together to decrease the magnification.

Let's remove our thumb. And as we move around, we can now see more of our screen. You can decide how much magnification you want and when you find that sweet spot, go ahead and leave it like that. The next time you use the quick zoom feature, your magnification will go straight to the level you left it at.

Okay, once we're done viewing what's on the screen, we'll lift our finger to zoom back out. So let's go ahead and lift our finger.

Now our screen is no longer magnified and the next time we want to use magnification, we'll tap on our accessibility button again. This quick zoom feature really comes in handy when we want to quickly magnify what's on our screen. Try it out on your device and be sure to check out the rest of this series for additional tips on magnification and more. Thanks for learning with me today. Until next time!