How do I change the colour and contrast when reading e-books on a computer, tablet or phone?
PC or Laptop
You can use the colour filters in ‘Ease of Access’ on Windows, which works for e-books, online or downloaded content with Adobe Digital Editions. You can find this on your computer by going to settings or typing ‘Ease of Access’ into the windows search box. From here you can change the colour and contrast of your screen, as well as other accessibility settings.
If you read e-books online, on a pc or laptop the functions are not the same as on a phone or tablet. Websites are designed to work in conjunction with various screen readers but when changing fonts they recommend downloading the books in EPUB not PDF.
Websites are also designed to work in conjunction with Windows Ease of Access settings. So, you can choose and change the background and text colours in settings in the same way as described above.
When you turn the colour filter on it will change the colours on the screen. For example, if you select ‘inverted’ colour filter, your screen will change from the first to the second image below:
Tablet or phone
Using a tablet or phone is a little different and you would use an e-reader.
The way you use accessibility features is dependent on the e-reader you are using. Reading online will impact the accessibility options, depending again on which site. For example, if you are going to read an Ebook Central e-book you should download it and read it using Adobe Digital Editions.
You can click on the sun image shown below which would appear at the bottom of your screen. This changes your colour settings and below is an example of black background to white text.
There are many different e-readers to choose from, so you’re unsure how to adjust your screen appearance on your chosen e-reader, go to settings.
For more advice on changing text size, background colour, font colour, or trying out read aloud functions, check out our guidance on each specific e-book platform. For more general guidance on how to use e-books, including common issues and support, have a look at our How to use e-books page.