Your Phone Has Tools for Eyes, Ears, and Hands

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Your phone may be doing far more to make itself easier to use than you realise. Both iPhones and Android phones have accessibility settings designed to help with vision, hearing, movement, and reading.

They are not only for people with a disability. They can be useful if small text has become harder to read, you sometimes miss spoken information, or you simply find certain controls fiddly.

Start with the display. Increasing text size can make messages, emails, and websites considerably easier to read without holding your phone at arm’s length.

Many phones also offer display magnification, which lets you temporarily enlarge part of the screen rather than permanently changing everything. If bright screens are uncomfortable, look for settings such as dark mode, colour adjustments, or reduced brightness.

There are useful options for hearing, too. Captions can turn spoken dialogue into text while watching videos, which is particularly handy in noisy places or when someone on a video call is difficult to hear. Some phones also offer sound-related accessibility features that can make certain audio easier to notice or distinguish.

If your hands are not as quick or steady as they once were, look at touch and interaction settings. You may be able to increase the time before a tap or swipe is recognised, adjust how the screen responds to repeated touches, or use voice commands for certain tasks. These small changes can remove quite a bit of frustration.

It is worth exploring these settings once rather than waiting until something becomes genuinely difficult. Netsafe recommends that older adults make use of user-friendly device settings as part of safer, more comfortable technology use.

Open your phone’s Settings and search for Accessibility. You do not need to change everything. Try one setting at a time, keep what helps and switch off anything that does not. Your phone does not necessarily need to become more complicated with age. In some cases, it can actually become easier to use.