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.

Pane and menu fonts has CSS snippets you can add to a optional UserChrome.css file to change the font, font size, and other attributes of fonts. You could also use already customized CSS styles from UserStyles.org using the Stylish for Thunderbird add-on. For example, TwisterMc's "Make TB labels stand out" style tries to make it easier to see tagged messages.

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