Brightness
Learn how to use accessibility features in Illustrator and how to create accessible designs using Illustrator.
Accessibility of software involves features in it that help people with visual, auditory, speech, motor, cognitive, and mobile disabilities use it with less difficulty. By extension, it also involves the usability of assistive technologies like screen readers and screen magnifiers with the software.
Illustrator has some tools and functionalities that are accessibility-friendly. It also lets you create accessible designs.
Illustrator is not accessibility-friendly for people with full vision loss. It does partially support people with limited vision. See screen readers.
Explore the native accessibility-friendly features in Illustrator.
Users with limited manipulation cannot rely on a keyboard alone to interact with user interfaces. Though there are key combinations to perform certain functions, certain features cannot be accessed with the keyboard-only operation.
Brightness |
You can change the brightness of the Illustrator user interface to Dark, Medium Dark, Medium Light, or Light. Go to Edit > Preferences > User Interface. Click the appropriate brightness icon next to Brightness and click OK. |
Large Tabs |
You can change the size of document tabs. Go to Edit > Preferences > User Interface. Check Large Tabs and click OK. |
Selection & Anchor display |
You can increase the size of selection handles, anchor points, and bezier controls. Go to Illustrator > Preferences > Selection & Anchor display and move the slider of Anchor points, Handle and Bounding Box Display to its max value. |
UI Scaling |
Screens with larger resolution have an option for UI scaling. Go to Edit > Preferences > User Interface. Move the slider next to UI Scaling to select the required scaling and click OK. |
Appearance of Black |
You can set the appearance of black as Rich Black on RGB and grayscale devices, for on-screen or printing/exporting appearance. Go to Edit > Preferences > Appearance of Black. Choose Rich Black for On Screen or Printing/ Exporting. and click OK. |
Text |
Most text meets minimum contrast requirements except when tools are highlighted, the light blue text on the light gray background lacks sufficient contrast. |
Non-text elements |
Most meaningful non-text content elements have sufficient contrast except in some functions, a control has a dark blue outline on a dark gray background. |
Illustrator does not fully support high contrast mode on Windows. Illustrator does not respond to high contrast mode except for title bars and menus.
Illustrator allows operating system display scaling to resize text up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality for most functions. Exceptions include:
Illustrator supports Wacom tablets. To enable Wacom, go to Edit > Preferences > Devices, and check Enable Wacom.
Explore the usability of assistive technologies in Illustrator.
Most non-text elements in Illustrator don't have correct text alternatives for use by screen readers. For example, icons that visually indicate the state and status of tool options. To use the screen reader, ensure that you've enabled VoiceOver (macOS) and installed JAWS Client (Windows).
Follow these steps to enable the screen reader:
The screen reader is supported on the following UI items:
Panels are partially supported.
Illustrator works with screen magnifiers in general.
You can create Color Blind Safe color themes for your design using Adobe Color. Once you create them, you can access them from Window > Libraries, or Window > Color Themes. To learn more, see Adobe Color | Accessibility tools.
To see how your design appears for people with Protanopia and Deuteranopia, go to View > Proof Setup and choose Color blindness - Protanopia-type and Color blindness - Deuteranopia-type respectively. You can adjust your design colors accordingly.
Illustrator does not provide you an option to add text alternatives to non-text elements in PDF documents. Text alternatives can be added using Adobe Acrobat.
For more on Illustrator accessibility, see Adobe Accessibility Conformance Report.
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