Windows Phone 8.1 More accessible

Windows had accessibility features for as long as I can remember, and just in case you didn’t remember how good they’ve been at it, Microsoft saw it fit to feature their technological achievements that help people in their latest Super Bowl commercial.

Windows Phone is no different, and through its Ease of Access setting it offered the ability to change text size, switching to a high contrast mode, global magnifier mode and settings for TTY/TDD.

However Windows Phone 8.1 brought more toys to the table

• A brand new Narrator mode which you can either be launched from there or you can turn on the shortcut key combination.
  P.S: don’t launch it before turning on the shortcut combination option or else you’ll need to open Ease of Access via Cortana only!
  Granted the Narrator needs a bit more work but it was great seeing it working all across the OS (didn’t get to understand how to scroll on that thing.)

• There’s an option to read the caller’s ID out loud but I’m just not sure if this is new or not, but its great to have non the less.
• Windows Phone 8.1 also added the option to bypass zooming restrictions on some sites. (Cough: Google search, cough Instagram website)
• Along with the new video streaming abilities and captions support you can now change those captions size, font, color, backgrounds and even effects to your satisfaction.

Thanks for reading and by the way that global zooming is my favorite feature so far, so nice to be able to zoom on any video or any game to get more details, what’s your favorite usage case for accessibility settings?

Category: Lumia, Nokia, Windows Phone