In this blog series, I will cover the Color Filters feature added to Accessibility with iOS 10. If the last blog didn’t make you check out the Accessibility Features with the iOS 10 upgrade on your iPhone and iPad, this next feature I describe will!
No other phone or touch screen tablet has ever addressed color adjustment options to assist with color blindness. iOS 10 now added Color Filters feature to Accessibility. This new feature helps compensate for color blindness and can also be a great tool for those who find it difficult to read text, look at bright colors on their devices or have other vision challenges.
To set this up:
- Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Display Accommodations > Color Filters.
- When you turn on Color Filters, there will be 5 filters to choose from. Three of these options are meant to compensate for color blindness.
- Grayscale
- Red/Green for Protanopia
- Green/Red for Deuteranopia
- Blue/Yellow for Tritanopia
- Color Tint
- The Color Tint option allows one to customize the colors on display that fits the user’s needs.
- Tap and drag on the Intensity slider to increase or decrease the intensity of the filter chosen.
- Tap and drag on the Hue slider to get the desired tint.
Once the Color Filters have been set up, the settings will apply to everything that appears on your device. The color changes only affect the screen and cannot be captured in a screen shot.
There is a way to quickly switch back and forth between the new color filter setting and the normal bright non-filtered setting without going through the Settings, General, Accessibility, Display Accommodations and Color Filters steps. Go to Settings, General, and Accessibility, then scroll all the way down to find Accessibility Shortcut. Choose Color Filters and you’re done. Now, quickly triple-click the Home button to switch between normal and Color Filter screens. If you set up multiple Accessibility Shortcuts, you’ll have to choose which one to use when triple clicking the home button, but it’s still faster than troubling with the whole settings process again.
Perhaps these Color Filters may only serve a limited number of people, but they are useful and it is exciting to see Apple’s commitment to and support for those who have unique needs.