Tutorial: Enabling the Zoom feature on the iPad

I never know what child will come into my world.  I currently work with children with multiple disabilities, traumatic brain injury, autism, intellectual disabilities, speech difficulties, fluency problems.....the list goes on.  This year, I work with two children with visual impairments.

You also may either work with children who have visual impairments, or such a child  may come into your world tomorrow!  One never knows, but it's better to be prepared than to be caught off guard!   This is a quick and easy lesson on how to enable the zoom feature on your iPad (just in case!)

To get you started, please behold the 'normal' iPad screen of Angry Birds!    The little bird is so tiny that even my 56 year old eyes have trouble shooting the poor little thing into the towers.  Now think of a child who has impaired vision.

 To enable the zoom feature, first go to Settings.

 Then go to 'general' and touch 'accessibility'.














Find 'Zoom' and set to Yes.

Now that you have enabled Zoom, you are probably wondering how to use it.  Basically, if you double tap the screen with 3 fingers, you zoom in.  Double tap again to zoom out.  There's more than that, however, because you want to navigate a screen that's zoomed.  This is where it's best to see a quirky video.  The trick is to navigate with three fingers which might take some practice.

I want to show you an Angry Bird zoomed in.  Kids (and old adults) can now shoot with ease!

There is a blog on my favorites list, by the way--Thomas Marshall Does it All.   This is written by a mom who highlights day-to-day life (joys and struggles) with her son who has a severe visual impairment.  She also writes about iPads, among many other things.  Check it out!

Thomas Marshall Does it All blog screenshot

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