The Colour and contrast and Text sections of the panel let each visitor set the page the way their eyes like it. This article explains every mode and every slider, with the exact ranges.
Where to find them:
Open the Accessibility button, or press Alt + A. Colour and contrast sits under Profiles, and Text sits under that.
Colour and contrast:
One colour mode is active at a time. Press a tile to switch. The tile in use has a gold outline.
- As designed: the page exactly as you built it.
- Dark: a dark page. On the ResultsAiX Theme it uses the theme's own designed dark colours. On other themes it flips the page's colours to dark while keeping pictures, videos and embedded frames looking natural. It is in place from the first moment the page appears, with no flash of the old colours.
- High contrast: a black background, white text, and links in yellow with an underline. On other themes buttons get yellow text and a yellow outline too. Pictures are left as they are.
- Low colour: softer, less saturated colour on a warm, calm background, with muted pictures.
- Black and white: the whole page in shades of grey.
Dark, Low colour and Black and white change the colours of the whole screen without moving anything on it, so your sticky header, cookie banner and chat bubble stay exactly where they are. The Accessibility panel keeps its own colours so it stays easy to use.
How the modes look:
The Dark mode suits readers with light sensitivity and anyone reading at night. High contrast gives the strongest result on any theme. Low colour suits readers who find bright colour tiring. Black and white helps readers who find colour itself distracting.
Text:
- Text size: a slider from 85 to 200 percent, in steps of 5. The page starts at 100%.
- Line height: from 1.40 to 2.40. The page starts at 1.75.
- Letter spacing: from 0 to 0.20 em of extra space between letters.
- Word spacing: from 0 to 0.40 em of extra space between words.
- Font: As designed, Clear letters (Atkinson Hyperlegible) or Reading font (Lexend). Clear letters is a typeface designed for readers with low vision. Reading font is a typeface designed for reading ease. The font applies across the whole page, apart from icons.
- Alignment: three buttons for left, centre and right alignment of the article text. Press the highlighted one again to go back to the page's own alignment.
Every slider shows its live value as it moves.
Where the text controls apply:
Text size, line height, spacing and alignment work on the article text: the main content area the plugin finds on the page, plus the page title. Text size grows every heading and paragraph from its own size, so a heading stays a heading and a quote is never scaled twice. Menus, sidebars and footers keep their size, so your layout holds together.
If the slider does not change your article, set the article selector described in The Reading Tools Tab: Switches, Where It Shows, And The Article Selector.
The reading fonts:
Both reading fonts come with the plugin and load from your own site, so choosing one never calls any other service. A visitor's browser only downloads a font once the page uses it, when they pick it or pick a profile that uses it. If a font cannot load, the text falls back to a plain standard font.
The Aa button and Reset:
The Aa button on the reading bar steps the text size from Normal to Larger (120 percent) and Large (140 percent), then back to Normal, for anyone who does not want to open the panel. Its label always says the current step. The Reset button at the top of the panel clears every option at once.
A real example:
A visitor to Green Lane Garden Studio reads late in the evening and finds the white page glaring. She opens the panel and presses Dark. The page turns dark, the photos of the garden stay natural, and the reading bar and In short box follow. She also moves Line height up to 2.00. Both choices are there the next evening, before the page has even finished loading.
Tips:
- Try each mode on your own site once, so you know how your theme looks in it.
- If a theme paints colours into its own images or fixed backgrounds, Dark may change those parts only partly. Point visitors who want the strongest change to High contrast.
- Profiles set many of these controls at once. See The Five Reading Profiles, One By One.