For many years, Windows used to come with some accessibility options like high contrast color themes, narrator, magnifier etc. But recently, Microsoft has added newer accessibility tools in Windows 10 called “Color Filters” that could be useful for people having eye sight related problems. Color filters in Windows 10 allow you to switch the screen colors to grayscale, inverted, grayscale inverted in addition to three filters that can help people suffering from color blindness.
In order to use the color filters in Windows 10, you can proceed like this:
- Press the hotkey Win+I to open the Windows settings.
- In the settings window, select Ease of Access.
- Select Color filters from the left side and click/tap on Turn on color filters to enable them.
By default, Windows selects the grayscale color filters making your screen look like old fashioned black & white monitors from 1980s. But you can change the color filters to inverted which reverses the colors displayed on your screen. You can also enable a combination of inverted and grayscale filters which both turns your screen grayscale and then inverts the colors.
In addition to these three color filters, Windows 10 now has three more filters that can help people with color blindness. It displays a color wheel and you have to select one of the color blindness color filters that makes the colors in the wheel look distinct from each other. The filters address the deuteranopia (red green blindness), protanopia (red green blindness), and tritanopia (blue yellow blindness).
Color filters are also useful for people with regular eyesight as you can switch to the grayscale screen in order to reduce strain on your eyes. Of course, you can also use third party tools like f.lux to find many different screen color settings. Color filters feature is available only in the Windows 10 version 1803 (Aril 2018 update).