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Accessibility and Ease of Use

iPad users are all different, and some face vision or hearing challenges. If you're one of those folks, you'll be glad to hear that iPad offers some handy accessibility features.

To help you read your screen more easily, there's a Zoom feature that lets you enlarge the screen even more than the standard Zoom feature does.

There's even a White on Black screen option, which offers a black background with white lettering that some people find easier to read. You can also set up a feature called VoiceOver to read onscreen commands out loud. If hearing is your challenge, there's a setting for Mono Audio that's useful when you're wearing headphones. Finally, Speak Auto-text is a feature that iPad uses to tell you when any autocorrections or capitalizations are made to text that you enter in any iPad application.

Turning on Zoom

Normally, you can increase the size of things on your screen by doubletapping with two fingers. However, the Zoom feature enlarges the contents displayed on the iPad screen even more when you double-tap the screen with three fingers.

To turn the Zoom feature on, follow these steps:

1. Tap the Settings icon on the Home screen and then tap General.
2. In General settings, tap Accessibility.
3. Tap Zoom.
4. In the Zoom dialog, tap the Zoom On/Off button to turn the feature on.
5. Now go to a website (www.ipadmadeclear.com, for example) and double-tap the screen using three fingers; it enlarges.
6. Press three fingers on the screen and drag to move around it.
7. Double-tap with three fingers again to go back to regular magnification.
8. Tap the Home button to close Settings.

This Zoom feature works pretty much everywhere in iPad: in Photos, on web pages, in your Mail, and in iPod and Videos.

Turning on White on Black

White on Black is an accessibility setting that reverses colors on your screen so backgrounds are black and text is white. This can help people with particular vision challenges to read text more easily.

To turn this feature on:

1. Tap the Settings icon on the Home screen and then tap General.
2. Tap Accessibility.
3. In the Accessibility dialog, tap the White on Black On/Off button to turn it on.
   The colors on the screen reverse.

The White on Black feature works great in some places and not so well in others. For example, in the Photos application, pictures appear almost as photo negatives. Your Home screen image will likewise look a bit strange. And don't even think of playing a video with this feature turned on! However, if you need help reading text, White on Black can be very useful in several applications.