Apple has added several accessibility features to its iOS 15 release that can be explored and customized under the Accessibility section in Settings. zoom There’s a newly reworked Accessibility feature under iOS 15 that lets you magnify specific parts of your Apple device screen.
Nowadays, many people are spending a lot of time watching screens as the number of remote working increases due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The headache-causing blue lights and tiny prints on websites are very annoying when navigating the screen. The technology should also be accessible to blind and visually impaired users.
Apple’s Zoom Tool
The Zoom tool lets you magnify specific parts of your screen. You can customize the feature to magnify the entire screen or view with a draggable window.
Zoom allows you to turn on gestures such as double-tapping three fingers to activate zoom, move around your screen, and change magnification.
To access Zoom, open the Settings app on your Apple device, tap Accessibility, and select Zoom.
zoom tool function
You will need to go through some options present in the zoom tool for the magnification feature to work optimally. Here are the options you need to toggle on or off to get the right magnification for your needs.
Follow Focus: This option lets you track your selections, such as your text insertion point, as well as your typing.
Smart Typing: This is only available if you turn on Follow Focus. This lets you switch to window zoom when the keyboard pops up. Window zoom magnifies a portion of the screen in a window that you can drag around to enlarge to look like a digital magnifying glass. Also, once the keyboard pops up, you can double-tap to magnify where you’re typing, but the keyboard won’t magnify
keyboard shortcuts: This feature only works if you’ve connected an external keyboard to your iPad. If you have, just find and toggle on the option to customize keyboard shortcuts, like toggling zoom, move your window, resize your window, and more. If you open Zoom on your Mac, you can turn on the Zoom keyboard shortcut, scroll gestures, enable hover text, and zoom on the Touch Bar. For example, the toggle zoom is Option + Command + 8. Pressing that combination lets you zoom in and back out. You can also choose whether you want to enhance full screen, split-screen, or picture-in-picture mode.
Zoom Controller: It gives you quick access to the controls that are activated for single, double and triple taps on the screen. You can also select Show controller on screen. It puts a small icon on the screen which is very helpful when moving the window around the screen. When you enlarge a portion of the screen, think of it as a small map to keep you oriented. You can choose between five different colors to make the icon more visible as well as change the opacity.
Zoom Area: This function lets you choose between window zoom, full screen zoom, or pinned zoom. Window zoom will magnify a portion of your screen, but you’ll still be able to see some unmagnified screen and pan over that area. Full screen zoom removes the window and acts like double-tapping to enlarge and pan around a photo. Pinned Zoom lets you select a specific section of the screen – up, left, right or bottom – and keep the unpinned section at a regular size.
Zoom Filter: It lets you customize the color of the magnified section – inverted, grayscale, grayscale inverted or low light.
Max Zoom Level: It’s a simple slider that lets you customize the magnification anywhere from 1.2x to 15x.
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