Using Your Computer > Adapting Your Computer To Meet Your Needs

Customising the web

By Lasa Information Systems Team

Anyone who has a cognitive impairment, or who has less than perfect vision may find many websites difficult to access. Similarly people with a physical difficulty can find many web sites hard to use - for example using a mouse to click on a hyperlink may be very difficult. However, with a few adjustments to your keyboard, mouse and browser, many problems can be minimised or overcome.

Adjusting your keyboard and mouse

It is relatively straightforward to alter mouse and keyboard settings from the Windows control panel (go to start > settings > control panel). Here you will find accessibility, keyboard and mouse icons. Double clicking on keyboard or mouse icons will take you to further options for adjusting things like the responsiveness of the keyboard and mouse respectively. For people with more profound difficulties, the options under accessibility provide more advanced features for adjusting your mouse and keyboard as well as sound, display and other options.

Changing colours and fonts

In the control panel, double clicking on the display icon and clicking on the appearance tab gives you a number of options for changing the colour scheme, font sizes and styles. Changes you make here will be replicated in nearly all of your Windows applications (e.g. Microsoft Word).

Clicking on the settings tab under display options allows you to adjust your screen resolution. A setting of 800 x 600 is about the lowest level you can get away with in Windows. It will make the fonts in menus and web pages bigger than you'd get at higher screen resolutions.

Fine tuning your browser settings

Making the above alterations will have an effect on your Web surfing. However there are adjustments you can make within your browser to further improve things if needed. All web pages will have their own colour scheme for the text and background. In many browsers (including Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Opera and Mozilla), font sizes, styles, colours and the way graphical images are displayed on web pages can be overridden and your own settings used instead. In Internet Explorer, the easiest way to quickly adjust text size is to select view > text size from the menu. Select the appropriate option from the text size sub menu (e.g. larger, largest etc.). Other browsers have comparable options under view > text zoom or similar.

Again in Internet Explorer, by selecting Tools > Internet Options from menu bar, and clicking on the accessibility button on the general tab, you can tick the boxes to override web page settings for colours, font sizes and styles. Back on the General tab, choosing the Colors button presents you with several options that allow you to specify your own preferences for text, background and hyperlink colours. Alternatively you can tick the box to make the browser use your chosen Windows colour scheme.

Selecting Tools > Internet options and clicking on the advanced tab in Internet Explorer presents you with options to prevent images from being displayed on web pages (un tick the show pictures box), or prevent images from flashing or moving (untick the play animations box). Scroll down to the multimedia section to access these options.

Keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts allow you to surf without using a mouse. In Internet Explorer Ctrl +O opens a web page, Alt+Left and Right arrows allows you to go back or forward a page, Tab and Shift +Tab allow you to move forwards or backwards through hyperlinks on a page. Some of these shortcuts also work in other browsers.

More Information

For more information on customising your computer and / or browser to suit your needs, visit AbilityNet's site My computer, my way - a guide to making your PC accessible.