In short and in plain language
Is the text too small or the sound too quiet? Your phone has its own help for this. It is already on the device.
This post shows where to find these settings. You can make the text bigger. More contrast can also help you read.
Your phone can also read texts out loud. Subtitles help when speech is hard to hear.
If your hand is unsteady, you can change how tapping works.
We set up your phone for you in your own home.
The phone is lying on the table, and for a while now the text on it has been a touch too small. You hold it further away, narrow your eyes, look for your reading glasses - and at some point you reach for it less often. Yet every device contains a menu built for exactly this purpose: the accessibility settings. They are not an optional extra and not a special accessory, but part of the operating system that is on the device anyway. Worldwide, at least 2.2 billion people have a near or distance vision impairment (WHO), and the main condition behind failing near vision is presbyopia, with 826 million people affected (WHO). So this is not a niche topic, but from a certain age onwards the normal case. In Germany, a good 7.8 million people with a severe disability were living here at the end of 2025 (Destatis), a good third of them - 34 percent - aged 75 or over (Destatis). This guide shows which four switches in the accessibility settings make the biggest difference: text size, contrast, read aloud and subtitles. It explains where they sit in the menu, in which order to touch them, how you notice that one step went too far, and what manufacturers have had to supply themselves since June 2025.
Key takeaways
- Accessibility settings are part of the operating system and already on the device. No extra app and no purchase is required to change text, contrast, sound and tapping behaviour.
- Text size is the first switch, but rarely the only one. Only together with display size, bolder text and higher contrast does the device become noticeably easier to operate.
- Reading aloud does not replace reading, it takes the strain off. For long messages, package leaflets and letters from the authorities, the read-aloud function is often more comfortable than yet more magnification.
- Subtitles help with more than hearing loss. Worldwide, over 25 percent of people aged over 60 are affected by disabling hearing loss (WHO) - for this group, subtitles decide whether you can follow a video or drop out.
- Since 28 June 2025 the German Accessibility Strengthening Act has also applied to consumer hardware including its operating system (BFSG). What a new device brings along in terms of accessibility settings is therefore no longer a matter of goodwill.
Why the accessibility settings are so rarely opened
Anyone reading about technology for older people today quickly ends up at additional devices: at voice assistants you learn to set up and operate, at connected technology around the home or at an emergency watch. These are sensible additions, but they all assume that the phone itself remains usable. That is exactly where hardly anybody starts, because the menu carries an unwieldy name and sits far down in the settings. The second reason is more uncomfortable and rarely said out loud: many people experience opening this menu as an admission. As long as magnification counts as an aid for other people, it stays unused - although technically it is the same thing as zooming in a browser, which nobody calls an aid. It is worth deliberately pushing that thought aside: larger text is as little an admission as a pair of reading glasses on the bedside table.
The figures argue against treating the topic as a special case. Measured against the total population, 9.4 percent of people in Germany had a severe disability at the end of 2025 (Destatis). Among people with a severe disability in Germany at the end of 2025, 4 percent had blindness or a visual impairment as their most severe disability, and a further 4 percent had hearing loss, balance or speech disorders (Destatis). Those, however, are only the officially recorded cases with a pass. The German Federation of the Blind and Partially Sighted reports a total of 558,725 blind and partially sighted people for the reference date of 31 December 2021, among them 71,260 blind people, and explicitly describes these values as a confirmed lower bound (DBSV). So there is a gap between the official statistics and everyday life, and a great many people sit in it who hold no pass and still see worse than they did five years ago.
Accessibility settings are not an add-on app
Where the settings sit on the device
The route into the menu is similar on all common systems: open Settings, scroll down, look for the entry with the person or circle symbol. Depending on the device it is called Accessibility, Assistance or Ease of access. If scrolling is tiresome, the search field at the very top of Settings helps: typing the word text or contrast there is enough to land directly on the matching switch. In our smartphone courses this move is usually the first exercise, because it makes the rest unnecessary. Anyone who knows the search field can find any setting again without memorising the structure of the menu - and that matters more than it sounds, because after a larger system update entries tend to move somewhere else.
- Open Settings - the cog symbol on the home screen.
- Tap into the search field at the very top and type accessibility. On devices without a search field, scroll to the entry with the person symbol.
- Open the Vision section and look at text size and display size first - these are two separate switches with different effects.
- Check every change against a real message, not against the preview text in the menu.
- If something does not fit, turn back the individual switch instead of resetting the whole device.
Vision
Text size, display size, bold text, higher contrast, colour inversion and magnifier. This is where the magnification sits that, under the standard, has to hold up to 200 percent without loss of content or function (W3C).
Hearing
Subtitles, mono audio, balance between left and right, hearing aid pairing and boosting of quiet passages. Worldwide, 430 million people require rehabilitation for disabling hearing loss (WHO).
Tapping and holding
Touch-and-hold delay, ignoring repeat taps, key size and switching off the shake gesture. For touch targets the standard names 24 by 24 CSS pixels as the minimum size (W3C).
Text and contrast: the first move
Almost every device has two separate sliders that are frequently mixed up. Text size changes only the text. Display size - on some devices also called screen size - additionally enlarges symbols, buttons and spacing. Turn up only the text and you get large letters inside unchanged small buttons. Turn up only the display size and you get large buttons with still thin text. The noticeable relief only comes from combining them. As a rule of thumb: first raise the display size by one step, then increase the text size until a normal message is readable without squinting, and only then decide whether bold text is needed as well.
- Raise the display size by one step, then increase the text size gradually and read a real message after each step.
- Switch on bold text if the letters look large but pale. With a clouded lens this often helps more than yet more size.
- Raise the contrast: the standard requires a ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for user interface components (W3C). The switch on the device raises exactly that value.
- Only try colour filters or colour inversion if bright areas dazzle you. Photos look distorted with it - for viewing pictures the switch is better off again, as described in our guide to sorting and managing photos.
- Finally look at the lock screen: the clock and notifications there often have their own, smaller presentation that the other settings leave untouched.
The test that counts
Reading aloud instead of straining to read
The read-aloud function is the most underrated switch in the whole menu. It reads out selected text or the entire screen content: messages, articles, package leaflets, photographed letters. Unlike the screen readers for blind people it is built for sighted users - it reads on request and otherwise stays silent. People who have set it up once mostly use it for long texts and carry on reading short ones themselves. That is exactly the right way to handle it. It is particularly practical for documents in the electronic patient record, which are often supplied as PDFs and typeset in small print.
- In the accessibility settings, open the Vision section and look for the entry for spoken content or reading aloud.
- Switch on the option for speaking the screen. On some devices a second switch for selected text comes with it.
- Set the speaking rate to a comfortable level. The default is too fast for most people.
- Choose the voice and listen to a sample once. Several voices are often available and they differ noticeably in how clear they are.
- Memorise the gesture that triggers it: usually a two-finger swipe downwards across the screen.
- Try it out on a long text and set the volume separately - on many devices reading aloud runs through the media volume, not the ringer volume.
Reading aloud is no substitute for glasses
Subtitles and sound: when speech gets lost
Hearing loss creeps up and is therefore noticed late. Worldwide, over 25 percent of people aged over 60 are affected by disabling hearing loss (WHO), and by 2050 nearly 2.5 billion people are projected to have some degree of hearing loss (WHO). In everyday life this first shows up at the television and on the telephone: the voices are there, but the words are missing. On the phone there are three switches for this that work together - automatic subtitles, the switch to mono audio and boosting quiet passages. The television set follows its own logic, which we describe in our guide to improving TV dialogue.
| Situation | Switch on the phone | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Video without subtitles | Automatic subtitles | The device displays spoken text, even for videos that bring no subtitles of their own. |
| Sound audible in one ear only | Mono audio | Both channels are combined so that no part is lost on the weaker side. |
| One side louder than the other | Left and right balance | The volume is adjusted per side instead of turning the whole device up. |
| Ringing goes unheard | Flash for calls | The camera light flashes for calls and messages and makes an incoming contact visible. |
| Hearing aid available | Hearing aid pairing | Calls and media audio run straight into the hearing aid, with no extra intermediate device. |
Subtitles have a side effect that surprises many people: they also help when hearing is good but the surroundings are loud. Once the switch has been turned on, experience shows it stays on. What matters is the link to the emergency route: if the ringing goes unheard, even the most careful subtitling helps little as long as a call goes unnoticed in the first place. How to set up a second, independent route for that is described in our guide to the emergency watch with fall detection.
Tapping with an unsteady hand
The third area is rarely touched, although it often solves the actual problem. When the finger trembles, the device triggers actions nobody wanted: duplicated entries, dragging instead of tapping, symbols suddenly moved around the home screen. The accessibility settings let you adjust the touch-and-hold delay - the device only counts a touch as a tap once it has lasted long enough. A second switch ignores repeated touches within a set period. Both together turn a jumpy device into a calm one, without changing anything about how the interface looks.
For the size of touch targets there is a solid figure: the standard names 24 by 24 CSS pixels as the minimum size for user interface components (W3C). Smaller is permitted if enough spacing remains around it. Where an application falls below that, the display size on the device helps, because it enlarges the buttons as well. This matters especially for banking, where a wrong digit gets expensive - our guide to payee verification in online banking fits here.
- Set the touch-and-hold delay to a middle level and try it out on the keyboard, not on the home screen.
- Switch on the ignoring of repeat taps if letters appear twice.
- Turn off the shake-to-undo gesture - it triggers unwanted actions when you pick the device up.
- Set the keyboard to large keys with visible suggestions instead of swipe input.
- Look at the power button and the volume rocker: some devices let you assign a function to a double press, which reduces mis-taps.
What manufacturers have had to supply since 2025
Since 28 June 2025 the German Accessibility Strengthening Act has applied to products placed on the market after that date - explicitly including general purpose computer hardware systems for consumers together with the operating systems intended for them (BFSG). The act describes accessibility as being findable, reachable and usable in the customary manner, without particular difficulty and in principle without outside help (BFSG). For you this means: the switches this guide is about are, on newly marketed devices, no longer a manufacturer's goodwill but part of what a device has to bring along.
The second reference point is technical. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines in version 2.2 have been a W3C Recommendation since 12 December 2024 and describe what text and interface components have to deliver: text has to be resizable up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality (W3C), and normal text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 (W3C). These values are the yardstick applications and websites have to be measured against - they also explain why one app looks clean after enlargement and another falls apart. If you pass a device on later, the same careful look applies to the data on it: our guide to erasing data safely before selling describes the order in which that works.
Products and services are accessible if they can be found, reached and used by people with disabilities in the customary manner, without particular difficulty and in principle without outside help.
The direction is set, but the work on the individual device remains. That applies in particular to applications that are only just arriving: when the ID card moves onto the phone, the confirmation has to be readable and the button has to be hittable - what to watch out for is described in our guide to the digital wallet on your phone. Encouragingly, the number of people without internet access keeps falling: in the 65 to 74 age group, around one in ten - 10 percent - had not used the internet up to that point in 2025 (Destatis). A year earlier the figure in the same age group was higher still.
How we set this up in your own home
Stocktaking at your usual seat
We look at how you hold the device, how bright the room is and which three tasks you use it for most often. That determines which switches make sense at all.
Setting vision and checking it
We set display size, text size, bold text and contrast together - and check the result on a real message, a calendar entry and a PDF, not on the preview text in the menu.
Setting up hearing and reading aloud
We adjust subtitles, mono audio and balance, set up the read-aloud function and practise the gesture that starts it. If you wish, we pair an existing hearing aid with the device.
A written note and a follow-up
You get a short note with the path through the menu and every value we set. If after two weeks one step turns out to be too high or too low, we readjust it.
The whole thing usually takes just under an hour and is part of our tech help for seniors. If you are unsure whether the effort is worth it: experience shows it pays off as soon as a single daily task works without reading glasses again - reading a message, checking an appointment, seeing who is calling. Give us a ring or write to us through the contact form, and we will clarify on the phone beforehand what is due on your device and which settings you can already make yourself before our visit.
Sources and studies
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