Built in features & Settings

Microsoft Windows offers a suite of built-in accessibility features designed to enhance the user experience for individuals with visual and hearing impairments. These features aim to make the operating system more inclusive by providing tools for managing captions and subtitles, sound notifications, and audio settings. Whether it’s customizing the display of captions or adjusting audio output for users with hearing loss, these features ensure that Windows is accessible to a broader range of users. Windows software has several features that a person with a disability can choose to make it easier for them to work on the computer. The user can in the first way write/search the menu of Accessibility, otherwise in shortcut keyboard mode can press: Windows logo key + U.

• The options and settings provided in the Accessibility menu for low hearing are:

Audio: 

• Volume Control: Windows allows users to adjust the volume of their audio output. The users can control the volume of individual applications as well as system-wide volume settings.
• Mono Audio: This feature combines the left and right audio channels into a single channel, which can be helpful for users with hearing loss in one ear.

Captions: Windows provides system wide caption settings in the “Accessibility menu” of the settings app. Users can adjust caption appearance, including text size, front, color, and background to make captions more readable.

Closed Caption and Subtitles

1. Turn on live captions:

To enable live captions, do one of the following:

• Enable the Live Captions toggle in the Accessibility quick settings drop-down. (To open the quick settings, select the battery, network, or volume icon in the taskbar).
• Press the Windows logo key + Ctrl + L.
• Select Start > All apps > Accessibility > Accessibility > Live captions.
• Go to Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility > Captions and turn on the Live Captions toggle.

When first enabled, Live Captions will prompt you to download live caption language files to be used by the device’s speech recognition. If your language is not available, you can use another language during installation.

2. Personalize how captions are displayed

To choose where captions are displayed on your desktop:

• Select the Settings button in the live captions window.
• Select Position.
• Choose either Top, Bottom, or Floating on screen.
• When you choose Top or Bottom, the captions window will appear as docked to the top or bottom screen edges in reserved space on your desktop, and other apps will not be blocked by the captions window. When docked to the top, you might find that live captions work well while sharing video in a virtual meeting or conversation, whereas in other cases, such as viewing videos, docking to bottom might work best.
• When you choose Floating on screen, the live captions will appear in an overlay window which you can reposition as needed to avoid obscuring other apps in use.

To show more lines of text in the captions window, increase the window size by using the mouse, touch, or keyboard.

3. Make captions easier to read

• Select the Settings button in the live captions window.
• Select Preferences.
• Select Caption style. The Accessibility settings for Captions opens.
• Under Caption style, do one of the following:
• Select a built-in style from the dropdown menu. Use the Default built-in style to have captions displayed with colors appropriate to your device’s dark or light mode setting in Settings > Personalization > Colors > Choose your mode.
• Select the Edit button to create a custom style that works best for you.

Sounds Notifications

Windows audio alerts provide audio feedback and notifications to inform users about events, actions, or changes to the operating system or applications. To change the Notification Sounds in Windows 10 the user can follow the steps below:

1. Right click the Start button.
2. Go to Control Panel.
3. Change the View into Small icons.
4. Click Sound.
5. Then select Sounds.
6. Under the Program Events, look for Notification then click it.
7. From the drop-down menu, choose the Notification sound then click Apply.

Mono Audio

Mono audio in Windows is a mode that combines sound from the left and right audio channels and plays it through a single audio channel (usually the center speaker or the left and right speakers equally). This mode is designed primarily for accessibility purposes and is useful for people with hearing problems in one ear. By combining both audio channels into one, users with hearing loss in one ear can hear audio content more clearly and without losing information that may be present in either the left or right audio channel. See how to enable monaural audio in Windows 10 and 11:

1. Right-click the speaker icon in the Windows taskbar (system tray) or open the “Sound” settings from Control Panel.
2. Select “Open Sound Settings” or “Sounds”.
3. In the sound settings, scroll down to the “Advanced sound options” section.
4. Under the “Mono audio” section, turn on the switch to enable mono audio.

Enabling mono audio will ensure that all audio outputs from your computer are played in mono mode, combining the left and right audio channels into one.