Windows Low Vision: Pointer

Have you ever been using your computer and all of a sudden you can't find your mouse pointer? When its set against a certain background, like a busy webpage, it seems to disappear.

One of the biggest challenges for those of us with low vision is finding our pointer. Of all of the fantastic tools in our Ease of Access Toolbox, my favorite is the mouse pointer setting where we can customize our pointer to make it as big and as high contrast as we need. Let's find out how.

From anywhere on our computer, let's open Ease of Access by pressing the Windows key and the letter U for usable. In our left pane, we select Mouse Pointer. In the right pane, our first control is a slider bar. It lets us change the pointer size to a size that works best for us. We can use either our mouse pointer or our arrow keys to move the control to the right to enlarge our pointer. Let's give that a try now.

Wow, that makes a huge difference, doesn't it? If it's a little too large, we press our left arrow key or select and drag our slider bar to the left to make it smaller. Our next control lets us change our pointer's color. Each of these four buttons gives us plenty of choices. Our first choice is the traditional black outline with white interior.

Next, we have a solid black, and then, we have inverted. I like inverted because no matter what the color of my background might be, my pointer color is inverted. This feature provides high contrast and makes it easier to find.

Our last color choice is relatively new. When we select it, we open a bar of suggested colors, and beneath that, we have the option to pick a custom color. Let's select this button to see our choices. We've opened a color palette with a full range of colors and shades. We'll use our mouse pointer to click on a color, then move the slider bar to make the selected color either darker or lighter.

When we use either our pointer or the left arrow key to move the bar to the left, we see the shade darken. When we move it to the right, our color lightens. I love this new feature because we really can customize our pointer color to an exact color and shade that works for us. Once we've picked our color and shade, we select the Done button by either using our mouse pointer or pressing the Enter key.

Our next group of controls are designed especially for those of us using a touchscreen. When we select the touch feedback toggle switch, we get visual feedback that tells us our touch has been recognized. The feedback is in the form of a circle at each point where our finger meets the touchscreen.

If we still find it hard to see the touchpoint, we can select the next control, a checkbox. When it's checked, the touchpoint will appear darker and larger.

There are several additional tools that make our mouse pointer easier to see. To learn more about them, be sure to check out the Mouse Settings Workshop in this series. In today's workshop, we explored lots of cool features to customize our mouse pointer and make it easier to see. I'm Vikki Vaughan and I thank you for joining me.