Accessible Guidelines

Summary

This page shows you how to change text size, text and background colors, and other display settings through your browser to help improve accessibility to our content.

Change Text Size with Zoom

To make text bigger, press two keys at the same time:

  • Ctrl and + keys in Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS
  • ⌘ and + keys in Mac OS

Most web browsers let you increase and decrease the size of text, images, and other web page content with “zoom” features. Some browsers let you choose to zoom only the text size.

To change the zoom in most browsers, press the following two keys at the same time:

  • In Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS:
    • To zoom bigger: “Ctrl” and “+” keys
    • To zoom smaller: “Ctrl” and “-” keys
  • Mac OS:
    • To zoom bigger: “⌘” and “+” keys
    • To zoom smaller: “⌘” and “-” keys

Browsers provide specific guidance on different ways to change the page zoom or text-only zoom:

Change Text Font Size and Color

Some browsers provide functionality to set different aspects of font and color in the default view.

Other text and color settings are available in Reader View.

Reader View

Most browsers offer a “Reader View” or “Reading View” that shows just the main content; it gets rid of navigation, ads, etc. Some browsers let you set the text font, text size, text color, background color, and line spacing in Reader View.

Advanced Options

There are many browser extensions and add-ons that provide additional control over how the browser displays text and other content.

While most browsers no long support user style sheets, extensions provide similar advanced user control. For example, the Stylus extension is available for several major browsers.

More Information

Why doesn’t this work with some other websites?

The browser settings on this page should work when websites and browsers meet accessibility guidelines and are designed for accessibility, flexibility, and user control. However:

  • some websites are designed to defeat user’s browser settings
  • some browsers do not provide as much user control

Text resizing, browser zoom, and other user choices may not work consistently on websites that do not meet accessibility guidelines.

Should websites provide a widget to change text, color, etc.

We chose to provide these instructions so that users can learn how to change the display for all websites. Widgets change only the website display settings they are embedded on.