Getting Started

Hi, my name is Vikki Vaughan, and I'd like to welcome you to this introduction to Facebook. If you're ready to join the nearly 3 billion people who use Facebook each month, you're in the right place. In this first workshop, we'll check out some cool low vision settings in Facebook. We'll also explore Facebook's privacy settings.

Now this series is designed for people with low vision. If you use a screen reader, be sure to check out Hadley's screen reading version of this series. Before we get started, you'll need to create your Facebook account. You can find directions for creating your account in the Resource section below this workshop. So let's check out Facebook's low vision features.

Many of us have issues with glare from our computer screen. The white screen can make it hard to read and over time can create eye strain. Facebook has a great tool called Dark Mode. It replaces the bright white screen on the website with a black background. This feature makes it easier for some of us to read our screen. It can also relieve eye strain that can result from squinting at the bright screen. Let's walk through turning on Facebook's Dark Mode on our computer.

We're using our Chrome browser to log into our account at www.facebook.com. And in the top right corner, we'll select the button with an outline of a person. This is our account button. Once we set up our profile picture, it will replace this outline. We'll learn how to set up our profile picture in another workshop in this series. This pulls up a dropdown menu.

Now, we select Display & accessibility. Under the Dark Mode header, let's select the circle next to On to turn on the feature. There's also an option to automatically adjust the display so that it matches our computer's display settings. Now, wouldn't it be nice if we could turn on Dark Mode while we're creating our account? Unfortunately, we have to create an account before we can access Facebook's accessibility options.

For those of us who need to enlarge the text and images on our screen, our Chrome browser has a handy built-in tool to zoom in or out. Let's give it a try. We'll hold down the Control key on our keyboard. While holding down this key, we tap on the plus sign. With each tap of the plus sign, the image gets a little larger.

If we wish to zoom out, we hold down the Control key and press the minus sign. This handy trick is a quick way to enlarge a webpage on the fly, and it works on any website. Pretty cool, right?

Chrome also allows us to make our text bigger by varying the font size. It has five different font sizes, from very small to very large to choose from. For more information, check out Hadley's Getting Online: Low Vision series. There you'll find a great little workshop about low vision options in Chrome. There's a link to that workshop in the Resource section below this workshop. Let's select our account button once again to close this menu.

Now that we've selected our vision options, let's move to a page called the News Feed or homepage. We do this by using our mouse pointer to select the home icon at the top of our page.

The homepage displays a continuous stream of other people's activities and posts. Once we've added some friends to our account, we'll see their posts, which often include comments, photos, and videos. We'll do a deep dive into our homepage in another workshop in this series.

Since we've created an account, when we first visit our homepage, Facebook gives us the option to remember our password the next time we log in. If we select OK, we won't have to enter our password every time we log in. We can simply select our profile picture, and we're there. When we're the only person using this computer, it's handy to have a quick way to visit our homepage. If we share this computer with others, it's best to require a password to log in. Which option you choose is a matter of personal preference.

Separate from the homepage is our Facebook wall or timeline. We go to our wall by selecting the account button once again at the top right corner of the homepage. We then select our Facebook name. Let's do that now.

Our wall is our history on Facebook. It includes any comments, activities, photos, or videos that we've posted to our wall. We can add as much or as little as we like. Of course, right now it's pretty bare, but coming up in other workshops in this series we make it a lot more interesting.

Facebook gives us options to select changes to the privacy of our information. Let's explore some of those together. Once again, we'll select our account button at the top right of our window. We then select Settings & privacy to open this window. Let's choose this first option, Settings.

A new window opens in general settings. Let's use our pointer to select Privacy in our left pane. Moving down the privacy page, we find a heading entitled Your Activity. The first option, ask us the question, "Who can see your future post?" At the far right, we see a link in blue with the word Edit.

When we select it with our mouse pointer, it opens a new window. There we find a dropdown menu. Let's select it with our pointer.

The privacy settings allows us to choose from five different options: Public, Friends, Friends except acquaintances, Specific friends, and Only me. Public means that anyone who visits our Facebook wall can see our information.

The Friends setting means that only those who we've accepted as Facebook friends can view our information.

While Friends except acquaintances allows us to exclude certain people from viewing our post. Specific friends means we select the friends we wish to share our post with.

Only me means exactly that, our information is only visible to us. Let's select Friends as our privacy option and then choose the Close button.

Now, there are many other privacy options to explore. I encourage you to take a deep dive into the privacy settings in your profile page.

We've taken quite a journey today. We've selected helpful low vision options, and we've chosen our Facebook privacy settings. Join me in the next workshop as we create our Facebook profile. I'm Vikki Vaughan, and I thank you for joining me.