Exploring the World Up Close: Mastering Magnification on Your Smartphone

Speaker 1:
Shaun of the Shed.

Speaker 2:
An AMI original podcast.

Shaun Preece:
Hola, you beauties and welcome back to another episode of Shaun of the Shed. I am Shaun Preece, I am sat in a garden shed in Manchester, but none of that matters. It's not important. What is important is that this is the show where I try and show everyone just how useful technology can be if you're blind or visually impaired like me.
It's June, it's absolutely boiling in this garden shed, so today it's going to be a quick and easy one. Someone has sent me an email asking about magnification software, and this is a really good point because you may have noticed that I focus a lot on-screen reading. This is where your technology, your devices, your smartphone, your computer actually talks to you and tells you what's on the screen if you can't see it, and I do focus a lot on that because that's what I use most of the time. Well, all of the time.
But there was the longest time when I was losing my vision, all I needed was the screen magnified. I needed large print. When it comes to accessibility, that's not necessarily only for people with disabilities. If you have just short sight and you struggle seeing that very small writing on a website, then magnification is all you need.
Now, you don't need specialist software, you don't need to buy anything in order to have magnification. In lots of devices such as an iPhone or an Android phone or Windows or Mac, you will find it has a magnifier feature built in. What I'm going to concentrate on today is Windows magnification, so if you're running Windows whatever it may be, let's say Windows 10 or 11 upwards, you have the ability to magnify your screen and make it as large as you like. So let's jump into it.
Now, you may remember way back at the start of this video I mentioned you don't need to buy specialist software to use magnification, and yes, that is absolutely true, but there are software magnifiers that you can buy. Some names to look up would be ZoomText, SuperNova, and from Freedom Scientific, I believe it's called MAGic. Those are very popular, worth a look if you are really serious about using magnification.
Now, if you're using a smartphone, and who isn't, of course, you can turn on magnification on those as well. If you're using an iPhone, you need to go to settings, accessibility, zoom, go in there, turn that on, and once that's on, simply double tap with three fingers to enable zoom. And if you want to zoom in, double tap with three fingers again and hold on the screen and slide up to zoom in or slide down to zoom out. To move the screen around, double tap with three fingers and simply drag them around to move the screen.
If you're using Android, go to settings, accessibility, and in the display section you will find magnification. Toggle that switch to on, then on your screen on the right hand side, you should see a button for magnification shortcut. When you tap on this, magnification will turn on. To zoom in, tap with one finger and use the pinch gesture like you are trying to pinch the screen to zoom in or out. To drag the screen around and view the entire screen, simply drag around with one finger.
There you go. That is magnification, short and sweet, but really useful and it's a really simple method that enables you to use your computer for as long as you can. I used it for years. And maybe just what you need before you need a screen reader, check it out.
Okay, so to demonstrate the magnification feature, I'm going to go to a website. Like most of us do on computers or devices, I'm going to go to a website. Let's go to ami.ca. That's always a good one. Check it out. Now remember, I can't see the screen at all here and if you're listening in audio, you are in the same boat as I am. On the screen right now, probably, is the website and it's just your normal default standard text size.
If you are struggling to see that at all, magnification is your friend, so let's star it up. All we need to do is press the Windows key and the plus key at the same time. Boosh, as soon as you do that, it will jump into whatever magnification level you've got set. You can go all the way up to 400 times magnification and that is massive. You're talking half a word virtually on the screen.
Now, I will say if you do need that much magnification, then it probably is time that you start thinking about switching over to a screen reader because it really isn't a great way to use a device. It's something that we've all gone through when we've lost sight. Entirely up to you, whatever makes you comfortable.
Let's go back to magnifier. Now, if I want to zoom in a bit more, again, just press the Windows key and the plus key and you zoom in again. This full screen has zoomed in. If you are a mouse user, you can simply move the mouse around and the screen will follow wherever you move your mouse pointer. If you are a screen reader user and you're using magnification, then it will follow wherever the screen reader focus is.
But there are different views you can have for magnification. If you don't want the full screen, you can set it to lens, which is pretty much just like holding a magnifying glass in your hand. Your mouse pointer will turn into a square and wherever you move the square, just that area of the screen will be magnified.
It is, as I said, it's like a virtual magnifying glass. It's quite cool and it may be handy for some people, but to be honest, the default view of full screen is probably the one people are going to use the most.
There is another view called Docked, which just zooms in a section of the screen going all the way across the screen. It may be something useful to you. I honestly don't find it very handy at all. The full screen, I find, is the most practical, the most useful.
Now what if you want to zoom out, can you guess? Plus zoomed in, Windows and the minus key, you were right, zooms you back out again. So let's press that once and if you can see the screen and you are watching the video, then the screen has zoomed out to the previous magnification level. Now, if you want to close down magnifier completely, you can hit Windows and Escape, so there you go.
I told you it was easy. That is magnifier. And you can use that anywhere. It's not just for a website. This is system-wide. You can use it on your desktop. You can use it on the login screen. As soon as you turn your computer on, you can have the magnifier come on straight away.
Now, I did mention earlier on a nifty little feature of being able to read text to you. If you don't want the eye strain of trying to magnify a lengthy email or document, you can simply sit back and let magnifier read a document to you. Let's check that out right now.
I'm going to go to Notepad. I've got some sample texts that I've written. To get it to read the screen or what's in front of me right now all I need to do is hit Control, Alt, and Enter.

Speaker 4:
This is just some text that I typed in order to demonstrate just how useful Windows magnifier can be if you struggle to read the text on your screen. Wow, it's hot outside, why not check out this episode of Double Tap TV.

Shaun Preece:
Woo, accessible barbecuing. Sounds fantastic. That's the description of Double Tap TV. Check it out. You can go to ami.ca or YouTube. I had to get a plug in there, obviously, but how cool was that? I'm not using a screen reader and it is important to know that this isn't a fully functioning screen reader. All this is doing is reading whatever's on the screen when you tell it to. It's really handy ... Or a website article you want to read and you just don't want to struggle trying to see it.
Let's take a look at the magnifier app itself and see what options we have in there. Okay, so I'm now in the magnifier app and the first option we have is Zoom Out. Yes, you can just hit space on this button to zoom out or click on it with your mouse or just hit Windows and the minus key to zoom out.
If we go to the next option in magnifier it's, guess, Zoom In. That's right. The next option is play/pause. Of course, that is for the screen reading aspect if you want it to read your email or whatever it is to you. And the keyboard shortcut for this, as I've just shown you, is Ctrl+Alt+Enter.
Let's go to the next option. Read from here, and this is an interesting one. If you are a mouse user, you're able to use your mouse on your computer, then you can press the Control and Alt keys and then left-click anywhere on the screen and magnifier will read from that point.
Let's go to the next option. This is the last one. Settings. I'm not going to go through them all. I think the defaults are fine for most people. If you want to play around with it, if you want to see what options are in there, go to settings. Now, there is a keyboard shortcut here, which is Control+Windows+M all at the same time. If you press that, it will take you to the magnifier settings. In here, you can change things like whether or not you want the invert colours on, so white on black or black on white, high contrast, or the style of magnification, like I mentioned earlier, the lens or the docked or full screen.
Also, if you hit space bar on the settings button, you'll get a dropdown menu, and in here you can change the voice options for Read Aloud, so if you found it slightly too slow or you hated the voice it was using to read that text earlier on, then you can change that in these settings. And that's it for the magnifier app.
How easy was that? I know I keep saying it, but it was, it was easy. It's easy. And that's it for another Shaun of the Shed. Thank you so much. Please like and subscribe if you like and want to subscribe. If you don't, it's fine. If you want to get in contact with me, you can email feedback@doubletaponair.com. Thanks again. Take care. I will see you next time.