Browser settings

Introduction

You can specify the font sizes, styles and colours, and foreground and background colours of Web pages displayed on your computer screen, even if the author of the Web page has already specified these. You can also specify the colour used to indicate links in Web pages, or a special colour for links that is used only when the mouse passes over the link.

This is useful if you have low vision, need larger fonts, or need high-contrast colours. You can set Internet Explorer to use the colours and fonts you specify, your default Windows colours and fonts, or the settings you specify in your own style sheet.


If you use the Internet Explorer or Netscape browsers to view the Internet, the following guidelines will enable you to enlarge the size of the text and control the colours on your screen:


Instructions for users of Microsoft Internet Explorer for PC

  1. Open your Internet Explorer Web Browser.
  2. Select 'Tools' from the menu at the top of your window.
  3. From the options which appear, select 'Internet options...'
  4. Click on the 'General' tab.
  5. Click on the button marked 'Accessibility'.
  6. To change your font size, select the checkbox marked 'Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages'.
  7. To remove background and font colours, select the checkbox marked 'Ignore colours specified on web pages'.
  8. Click OK (and again if necessary).
  9. Select 'View' from the menu at the top of your window.
  10. From the options which appear, select 'Text Size'.
  11. Select your desired text size.

Instructions for users of Microsoft Internet Explorer for Apple Mac

  1. Open your Internet Explorer Web Browser.
  2. Select the "edit" menu at the top of your window.
  3. From the options menu which appears, select "preferences".
  4. Click on "web content".
  5. Deselect the button marked "show style sheets".
  6. Return to the list of preferences.
  7. Click on "web browser".
  8. Select "language/fonts".
  9. Select the font size you require.

Instructions for users of Netscape Navigator


Text :

  1. Select 'Edit' from the menu at the top of the window and choose 'Preferences'.
  2. Open the Appearance group and click the 'Fonts' category.
  3. Next to 'For the encoding' should read Western to tell the computer which types of letters and symbols to use. From 'Size' select 18.
  4. Next to the Variable Width Font field is a drop down box: select 'Arial'. The Fixed Width Font box should already read 'Courier New'. From 'Size' select 18.
  5. To override the fonts used by the designer of the web page, select 'Use my default fonts overriding document specified fonts'.
  6. Click 'OK'.

Colours:

  1. Select 'Edit' from the menu at the top of the window and choose 'Preferences'.
  2. Open the Appearance group and click the 'Colours' category.
  3. Select a colour button to change colours of text, background, unvisited links, or visited links.
  4. To override the colours used by the designer of the web page, select 'Always use my colours, overriding document'.
  5. Click 'OK'.

More information on browsealoud

Visit the browsealoud Frequently Asked Questions web page for more information about browsealoud.