Starting another year, and Microsoft Window turned 35 as of November of 2020, and five years for the Windows 10 version. That’s lot of years to be staring at the screen, and wow, is my eyesight failing!

Yes, it’s age, but staring at a computer screen for decades can’t be helping.

Luckily on my Windows 10 computers there are few settings that can make a huge difference.  Here’s a few simple changes that I’ve been showing my clients, and I hope they help you.

The settings are all under the Ease of Access section in Windows Settings.  To get started, do these steps.

1. Click Start (the Windows looking icon at the lower left corner of the taskbar)
2. Click Settings (the Gear icon) then click on Home (if you’re not there already)
3. Click Ease of Access

1. Make the text easier to read

I’m one of those people that put loads of file icons on my Windows desktop.I know I should organize everything, and I do (eventually), but in the meantime finding what I’m looking for means looking at the tiny text under the icon.

Here how you can make the text slightly bigger without making the icons bigger, making things easier to read.

1. Get to the Ease of Access (see the steps at the top)
2. Click on Display on the left side. (If you just opened Ease of display, it’s the starting screen.)
3. Use the top slider to change the sample text size. I set my settings to 115%.
4. While you are here, you might as well make things a little faster by turning OFF the animation effects under Simplify and personalize Windows.
   1. Turn off Show animation in Windows
   2. Turn off Show transparency in Windows
   3. Turn off Automatically hide scroll bars in Windows

2. “Where’s the mouse pointer”

I have two huge 32-inch monitors.What that means is every now and then I play the locate the mouse pointer game.You know, the one where you come up to your screen and shake the mouse.

Whether you’re on a big screen or 14-inch laptop, sometimes spotting the mouse is a challenge.Here’s how you make it bigger and colorful.

1. Get to the Ease of Access (see the steps at the top)
2. Click Mouse Pointer on the left side.
3. Now use the top slider to change the size of the pointer.  I set mine to 3. (next year it’ll probably go to 4).
4. Click on the color wheel below the slider, and pick a color that you normally don’t see on your screen (purple or pink work for me)

3. “Where’s the text insertion I-Bar?”

If you’ve increased the size of your mouse point in step #2, then when you’re at a spot for typing, the mouse pointer changes its shape to the I-Bar mouse point.That helps, but that’s not the spot where the text gets entered.

Whether I’m typing a long email or working on an article, finding the thin I-Bar (text insertion cursor) location is hard.Here’s how you fix that.

1. Get to the Ease of Access (see the steps at the top)
2. Click Text Cursor on the left side.
3. Turn ON the text cursor indicator, and translucent colored dots will appear above and below the I-Bar.
4. Use the slider to change the size of the colored dots.  I slide mine to 2.
5. Select the color for your dots.  I use Light Blue.

For this year, I’m planning on using as many ease-of-use crutches as I can.

I’ll be posting videos on our website for more ease-of-use crutches that I find.  You can find them at www.TechBldrs.com.

If you would like some help with your systems, you can contact me or my team at TechBldrs at 610.601.8017 or email us at info@techbldrs.com. And remember to check out our blog at www.Techbldrs.com/blog for more tips!