Browser Accessibility Setup Checklist for Readers with Visual or Cognitive Needs
A practical checklist for configuring your browser and reading tools to reduce visual strain, improve focus, and make long-form content accessible — before you add any extensions.
Before installing an extension or third-party reading tool, it is worth checking what your browser already provides. Most major browsers expose a surprisingly complete set of accessibility controls in their built-in settings, and configuring them correctly creates a baseline that every tool — including ReadEase — then builds on rather than fights against.
This is a practical checklist for readers who experience visual strain, difficulty focusing, or cognitive load from dense web content. Work through it top to bottom; most steps take under a minute.
1. Set a Comfortable Default Font Size
Chrome / Edge: Settings → Appearance → Font size. The default is 16 px (Medium); try Large (20 px) or Very Large (24 px) if text regularly feels too small.
Firefox: Settings → Language and Appearance → Fonts → Default font size. You can also set a minimum font size that overrides a site’s CSS — useful on sites that set body text to 13 or 14 px.
Safari: Preferences → Advanced → Accessibility → Never use font sizes smaller than [size].
A larger default reduces the need to zoom on individual pages and keeps text readable across new sites before you have adjusted anything.
2. Use the Browser’s Built-In Zoom
Page zoom (Ctrl + on Windows, Cmd + on macOS) is the fastest single adjustment for any page. It scales everything proportionally — text, images, spacing — without breaking page layout the way text-only zoom can.
All major browsers persist your zoom level per-origin. Set it once on a site and it applies every time you return. Chrome and Edge store per-origin zoom in Settings → Appearance → Page zoom as a default, so you can raise the baseline for all sites at once.
3. Enable Reader Mode
Reader mode strips a page to its text and images, removes ads and sidebars, and typically applies a clean sans-serif layout with generous line-height.
- Firefox: Click the book icon in the address bar (or press
F9) on any article page. - Safari: Click the Reader View button on the left of the address bar.
- Edge: The “Immersive Reader” icon appears in the address bar on supported pages.
- Chrome: No built-in reader mode; this is where ReadEase’s focus mode fills the gap.
Reader mode is effective for long-form articles and documentation pages. It is not available on interactive pages (web apps, dashboards) and does not work on every page even on sites it supports.
4. Check Colour and Contrast Settings
High contrast modes adjust the browser’s colour rendering for readers who find default contrast too low or too high.
Windows High Contrast / Forced Colours: Activated in Windows Settings → Accessibility → Contrast themes. When active, the browser passes forced-colors: active to CSS and overrides most site colours — effective but often visually dramatic.
macOS Increase Contrast: System Preferences → Accessibility → Display → Increase Contrast. Subtler effect; increases border visibility and reduces translucency.
For readers who prefer a warm or dim background rather than stark black-and-white high contrast: ReadEase’s focus mode provides sepia, dark, and grey background options that apply only to the article view, without modifying your system theme.
5. Adjust Caret and Cursor Visibility
Long reading sessions often involve following text with the cursor. A larger cursor reduces the effort of locating it after returning from another window.
Windows: Settings → Ease of Access → Mouse pointer → adjust size and colour.
macOS: System Preferences → Accessibility → Display → Cursor size.
Browser caret: In Firefox, about:config → accessibility.browsewithcaret → true activates a visible caret that moves through page text with arrow keys, useful for readers who prefer keyboard navigation over mouse tracking.
6. Configure Text Spacing (Firefox and Chrome)
Some readers with dyslexia or visual processing difficulties benefit from increased letter spacing, word spacing, or line height. The W3C’s WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.4.12 specifies the thresholds at which these adjustments should not break page content.
Firefox exposes these directly: Settings → Language and Appearance → Advanced → Spacing. Chrome does not have a built-in GUI for this; a user stylesheet or extension is needed.
ReadEase applies its own spacing and line-height defaults in focus mode, calibrated to research guidelines for comfortable reading across dyslexia profiles.
7. Enable a Dyslexia-Friendly Font
No browser ships a dyslexia-specific font by default, but you can set a custom default font:
Firefox: Settings → Language and Appearance → Fonts → choose a font installed on your system. OpenDyslexic and Lexie Readable are both freely downloadable.
Chrome / Edge: Settings → Appearance → Customize fonts — separate selectors for standard, serif, sans-serif, fixed-width, and math fonts.
ReadEase bundles OpenDyslexic and applies it automatically when the dyslexia font option is enabled in focus mode, so the system font list does not need to be changed.
8. Test with Keyboard-Only Navigation
If you use a keyboard for navigation, confirm that Tab moves focus visibly through interactive elements. In Chrome and Edge, tab focus on non-form elements is off by default on macOS; enable it in System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard navigation (macOS 13+) or the Full Keyboard Access option in earlier versions.
In Firefox, about:config → accessibility.tabfocus → 7 enables focus on all focusable elements.
Running through this checklist takes about ten minutes total and produces a browser environment that is already more readable than defaults on most sites. ReadEase, loaded on top of these baseline settings, adds focus mode, progress tracking, AI summarisation, and per-site customisation — but none of those features depend on overriding what your browser is already doing.