Windows 10 reached its end-of-life date on October 14, 2025 — Microsoft no longer ships security updates or feature updates for it. Roughly a third of Windows users were still on it at that cutoff, and the accessibility features remain useful for the people who haven’t upgraded. This guide walks through how to manage every Accessibility option on Windows 10, then covers what changed in Windows 11 (renamed “Accessibility,” added Voice Access and Live Captions) and what extra options ship with it.
Contents
Walkthrough: Ease of Access on Windows 10
Every accessibility option in Windows 10 lives under Settings > Ease of Access. The screenshots below show each section as it appears on a recent build. The walkthrough is in the order Microsoft groups them, from Display through to On-Screen Keyboard.
Follow these steps to enable the Accessibility features in Windows 10.
Open Settings
Find the cogwheel icon of Settings on the Start menu, or press Windows key + I to open Settings.
Open Ease of Access
Click on Ease of Access to manage every Accessibility option in Windows 10.
Customize Display
The Display tab is the first one inside Ease of Access. Drag the Make text bigger slider to enlarge text across menus, dialogs, and apps. The change applies system-wide once you click Apply.
Reduce visual distractions
Below the text size slider you can disable Windows animations, automatically hide scroll bars, and turn off transparency effects. Disabling animations is the single biggest legibility improvement for users with motion sensitivity.
Enlarge the cursor
Drag the Mouse pointer size slider to make the on-screen cursor larger. The maximum size is roughly four times the default.
Control the mouse with the keypad
Toggle Use numeric keypad to move mouse around the screen on. The number pad now drives the cursor — useful when a physical mouse fails or for users with limited fine-motor control.
Change the text cursor color
Under Text cursor, pick a colour for the typing caret. The high-visibility colours are easier to spot in long documents and code editors.
Enable Magnifier
Toggle Turn on Magnifier in the Magnifier section. The keyboard shortcut Windows key + Plus zooms in; Windows key + Minus zooms out; Windows key + Esc closes Magnifier.
Use Color filters
Apply a color filter to the screen to assist with colour-blindness. The presets cover red-green (deuteranopia, protanopia), blue-yellow (tritanopia), and grayscale.
Enable High Contrast
Use a high contrast theme to display text and apps with maximum colour separation. Pick from four built-in themes or create a custom one. The keyboard shortcut left Alt + left Shift + Print Screen toggles High Contrast on and off instantly.
Turn on Narrator
Toggle the Narrator switch on for the Windows built-in screen reader. The keyboard shortcut Windows key + Ctrl + Enter starts Narrator from anywhere. Use the Voice section below to pick from neural voices (added in the late 2021 update).
Adjust Audio settings
The Audio tab covers volume control, mono audio for users with hearing in only one ear, and visual notifications that flash the active window in place of audio alerts.
Customize Closed Captions
In the Closed Captions section, set the font, colour, background, and size used by Windows-aware media players for subtitles. Modern apps like Netflix and Apple TV ignore these settings in favour of their own.
Turn on Speech recognition
Toggle Speech to dictate into any text field and to control Windows by voice. The keyboard shortcut Windows key + H opens dictation in the active text field. Speech recognition needs to be set up once with a short voice-training session.
Show the On-Screen Keyboard
Toggle Use the On-Screen Keyboard to display a virtual keyboard that takes mouse, touch, or eye-gaze input. Useful when a physical keyboard fails or when accessibility hardware is in use.
What changed in Windows 11
Microsoft renamed Ease of Access to Accessibility in Windows 11. The settings page is restructured but every Windows 10 feature above still exists — most are now grouped under three top-level sections (Vision, Hearing, Interaction) instead of one long list. The keyboard shortcuts (Windows + Plus for Magnifier, Windows + Ctrl + Enter for Narrator, Windows + H for dictation) are unchanged.
To get to the renamed page in Windows 11: Settings > Accessibility (or right-click the Start button, choose Settings, then Accessibility from the left sidebar).
New accessibility features in Windows 11
The genuinely new accessibility additions exclusive to Windows 11 are worth knowing about, especially as Windows 10 has stopped receiving feature updates:
- Voice Access — a full hands-free Windows control system that lets you launch apps, navigate the desktop, dictate into any text field, and click any visible UI element by saying its name. Replaces the older Speech Recognition with an on-device model that does not need internet. Activate from Settings > Accessibility > Speech > Voice Access.
- Live Captions — system-wide captions for any audio playing through the device, generated in real time by an on-device model. Works for video calls, browser audio, music with vocals, and even captures captions in a meeting where the participant didn’t enable them. Toggle with Windows key + Ctrl + L, or via Settings > Accessibility > Captions > Live Captions.
- Focus sessions — built into the Clock app. Pairs with Do Not Disturb to suppress all notifications for a chosen duration, useful for users who find frequent interruptions overwhelming.
- Natural neural voices for Narrator — Windows 11 ships with significantly more natural-sounding TTS voices (Aria, Jenny, Guy, plus locale variants for more than 30 languages) than the older Windows 10 versions.
- Eye Control — pair Windows with a supported eye-tracking device and control the cursor and on-screen keyboard with eye gaze alone. Originally introduced in Windows 10’s late builds; matured significantly in Windows 11.
Should you upgrade to Windows 11 for accessibility?
The case is stronger now than at Windows 11’s launch. The two reasons that matter most:
- Security. Windows 10 stopped receiving security patches in October 2025. Any sensitive use of the device — banking, account logins, work — should move to a supported OS.
- Voice Access and Live Captions. These two features are genuinely meaningful upgrades that Microsoft is not backporting to Windows 10. If voice control or real-time captioning matter to you, upgrading is the only path to them on Windows.
For a step-by-step on the move, see our guides on how to upgrade between Windows versions and our broader Windows 10 review for context. If you cannot upgrade because your hardware doesn’t meet the Windows 11 requirements, the Windows 10 walkthrough above remains your best reference.
FAQ
Is Windows Narrator a real alternative to NVDA or JAWS?
For everyday tasks — reading documents, navigating menus, browsing simple websites — yes. Narrator has improved significantly since the 2020 neural voices update. For professional use cases that depend on deep app-specific support (Excel formulas, complex web apps, programming environments), NVDA (free) and JAWS (paid) still have the edge because of their long-established add-on ecosystems.
What are the keyboard shortcuts for Magnifier?
Windows key + Plus zooms in. Windows key + Minus zooms out. Windows key + Esc closes Magnifier. Windows key + Ctrl + M opens Magnifier settings. Inside Magnifier, Ctrl + Alt + Mouse-wheel adjusts zoom continuously, and Ctrl + Alt + R lets you resize the lens window when running in Lens mode.
What’s the difference between Voice Access and the older Speech Recognition?
Voice Access (Windows 11) is the modern replacement: it runs on-device with no internet required, supports natural-language commands like “click the Save button” or “open Outlook,” and includes a number-overlay mode that puts a label on every visible UI element so you can click any of them by saying the number. Old Speech Recognition (Windows 10) requires more rigid command syntax and predates the on-device speech models.
What happens to my Windows 10 PC now that it’s end-of-life?
It still works — Microsoft hasn’t disabled the OS — but it stops receiving security patches. Most third-party apps will continue updating for some time, but bank-issued and government apps may start refusing to launch on the unsupported OS as compliance audits force the issue. Microsoft sells extended security updates (ESU) for one year past EOL at consumer pricing, which is the cheapest stopgap if you can’t upgrade hardware yet.
Does turning off animations actually help accessibility?
Yes, for several distinct user groups: people with vestibular sensitivity (motion-induced dizziness), users on slower hardware where animations chop and feel laggy, and users with cognitive accessibility needs who find subtle motion distracting. The animation toggle is one of the highest-impact single accessibility settings on Windows.
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