The text is small and your eyes are hurting
You open an email, document, spreadsheet or online form and need to find a specific piece of information, such as a name, address, reference number, date or action. The text is small, the screen feels busy, and it takes extra effort to focus on the details.
Throughout the day, you move between Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, PDFs and other applications. The mouse pointer can be difficult to spot, buttons and links may appear small, and important information can be easy to overlook.
After a while, constantly squinting, leaning closer to the screen or zooming in and out can become tiring, especially when using a laptop or mobile device, or when working for long periods.
What is getting in the way?
Small text, crowded layouts and tiny on-screen controls can make digital content harder to read and navigate. This can affect people with low vision, age-related sight changes, eye strain, fatigue, migraines or other visual conditions.
Even people with good eyesight may find small text difficult to read when working on a smaller screen, in poor lighting, or after spending many hours looking at a display.
- Small text in emails, documents or forms
- Busy screens with lots of columns, menus, tabs, icons or links close together
- Losing your place when moving between documents, systems or screens
- Finding it hard to check fine details such as names, dates, addresses or figures
- Eye strain, headaches or tiredness after reading on screen for a long time
Tools that can help
Built-in accessibility features can make text, buttons and other on-screen elements larger and easier to see. You can increase text size, zoom in on content, enlarge the mouse pointer, or adjust your display settings to improve visibility.
- Magnifying, zooming, scaling and increasing the size of your screen – helps you control the size of text, images and elements on your screen
- Mouse pointer and text cursor settings – makes the pointer or typing cursor easier to see, especially when moving between screens or selecting fields in forms.
- Brightness, contrast and colour settings – can reduce glare and make information easier to read, particularly during longer periods of screen work.
Making small changes to how content is displayed can reduce eye strain, make information easier to find, and help you work more comfortably throughout the day.
You do not need to try everything. Start with one small change and see what helps.
