Although many people consider Apple to be the leader in accessibility, Microsoft Windows does have a wide-ranging set of accessibility features. I use some of them daily, including larger fonts, dark mode, a large inverse mouse cursor and the "sonar" setting my mouse that displays an animation where my mouse cursor is when I hit the CTRL key. But there's much more, as this article from the Ask Woody newsletter points out.
Windows’ built-in accessibility features are found in Settings. For Windows 10, look for Ease of Access. For Windows 11, the panel has been rebranded Accessibility, with a new icon shaped like a person. Regardless of its name, you can get directly to the settings with the keyboard shortcut WinKey+U, a shortcut that has been around since at least Windows 7. (See the Microsoft support article Windows keyboard shortcuts for accessibility for all the keyboard shortcuts associated with accessibility in Windows 7, 8.1, 10, and 11.)
Even the Windows sign-in screen has accessibility support. On the screen, three icons appear in the lower-right corner. The center one, which differs in appearance between Windows 10 and 11, brings up a menu of features you can enable to assist your sign-in.
Windows 11 has one more way to get to Accessibility settings. By default, the taskbar has a group of three icons representing connectivity, sound, and battery status. Clicking on the group (the individual icons are not clickable) pops up a small dialog that includes a button for Accessibility.
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