Bad Eyesight - Thunderbird
- This article was written for Thunderbird but also applies to Mozilla Suite / SeaMonkey (though some menu sequences may differ).
Sending Messages
There isn't much you can do to make a plain text message more easily readable. However, you can change the font and font size and bold the text in a HTML message to make it easier to read. The easiest way to do this is to create a message template and use it to create a new message whenever you send a message to somebody with poor eyesight. If you have any sort of organized data consider putting it in a table.
Reading Messages
There are a few themes designed for high contrast at the Mozilla Add-ons web site.
The Theme font & size changer add-on works with both Firefox and Thunderbird. It changes the fonts/font sizes in menus, toolbars etc. but not within a message. You can change the font/font size in messages using Tools -> Options -> Display -> Fonts -> Advanced. The author also wrote a Page Zoom button add-on for Firefox that might be useful.
There is a limit to what you can do within Thunderbird. It might be better to try to use some of the accessibility features of your operating system instead of tweaking each application.
- If you're using Windows run the accessibility wizard at Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Accessibility. If that doesn't help there is always Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Accessibility -> Magnifier
- Chose a high contrast theme by selecting the Appearance tab in the Display Properties control panel, and then Color Scheme.
- If you have a a LCD monitor, use the cleartype tuner powertoy to tune the the text to your eyesight.
- Dragon Naturally Speaking is speech recognition software, but it also has a text-to-speech option. You might buy something like that to speak what you are reading.
See Also
- Use my colors
- Pane and menu fonts
- White on black - Thunderbird
- Assistive technology compatibility
- Category:Visual_customizations_(Thunderbird) has several articles about using CSS to customize the user interface.
Forum Links
- Dark theme with high contrast for people with visual problems
- Dim display on some or many characters
- Thunderbird is not kind to visually impaired users
External Links
- Macros's accessibility blog discusses Firefox and Thunderbird.
- David Ascher blog entry about low vision theme