With one of the world’s most inclusive sporting events going on, we thought it’d be a good time to highlight how wearable tech can benefit people with vision, hearing, and mobility impairments.

Samsung’s new premium smart watch — Galaxy Watch Ultra — comes loaded with all sorts of accessibility features to help users get the most out of their device, no matter what their requirements are.

In this article, we’re going to look at these accessibility functions and explain how to activate them on the Galaxy Watch Ultra with easy-to-follow instructions.

Please note: Most accessibility features covered in this article should also work on the new Galaxy Watch7 and older Samsung smart watches (as long as they're running on One UI Watch 4.5. or later). All accessibility settings can be accessed and changed in the Galaxy Wearable app on your paired smartphone too.

Smart watches let you see and do loads of cool things on their small screens, from checking the weather to looking over sleep stats from the past week. But if you’re visually impaired, it can be tricky seeing the tiny text on these displays clearly.

Fortunately, Samsung watches like the Galaxy Watch Ultra have some great built-in visibility assistive features. Most of the 'Vision enhancements' mentioned below can be found in the watch's Settings menu under 'Accessibility'. Here's how to find them:

1. Swipe down from the top of the watch's screen.

2. Tap on Settings (the gear icon).

3. Scroll down and select 'Accessibility'.

TalkBack

This is a screen reader feature for people with blindness or poor vision. It offers audio descriptions so you can understand what's on the screen and interact with the watch using spoken feedback. There are many TalkBack features that can be personalised, so things are set up just right.

All of these settings can be accessed and changed from the main 'Accessibility' menu, with 'TalkBack' at the top of the list.

High contrast fonts

This setting turns all fonts white and adds a thin black outline around text to make it look sharper. This is so there's more contrast between the text and the background, improving readability.

Here's how to apply this setting:

1. Find 'High contrast fonts' at the top of the list of 'Vision enhancements'.

2. Tap on the toggle next to it to turn the feature on.

Colour correction

If you have difficulty seeing certain shades on the watch's display, you can apply a colour correction filter to make things clearer. This can help you distinguish colours better, with a choice of four settings available: Grayscale, Protan (red-green), Deutan (green-red), and Tritan (blue-yellow).

Switching them on takes just a few taps:

1. Tap on 'Colour correction' from the 'Vision enhancements' menu and toggle it on.

2. Scroll down and choose which colour correction filter you'd like to apply.

Colour inversion

This simple setting just inverts the colours on the watch's screen for better visibility. So, rather than having a black background with white text, it'll make the background white with black text:

1. Find 'Colour inversion' near the top of the ‘Vision enhancements' menu.

2. Toggle it on and the colours will invert immediately.

Colour filter

Another way to make text easier to read is by adding a colour filter over the watch's entire screen. This might be more effective than inverting the colours depending on your requirements:

1. Tap on 'Colour filter' from the 'Vision enhancements' screen.

2. Toggle the feature on.

3. Scroll down a little and choose which colour you'd like to apply. You can also adjust the opacity from between 20% to 60%.

Reduce animations

Some screen effects that occur when moving between pages and using certain apps can cause eye fatigue. You can reduce or remove these via the watch's settings:

1. On the 'Vision enhancements' list, scroll down until you see 'Reduce animations'.

2. Tap the toggle to switch it on.

3. Motion effects will now be reduced or no longer work. For example, swiping down from the watch face will now change to the menu immediately instead of dragging down smoothly.

Magnification

This is a really cool feature that lets you zoom in on content on the watch's display. If you're struggling to read something, you can just triple tap the screen to zoom in and use your finger to move around. You can also adjust the zoom by pinching with two fingers or zoom in temporarily by triple tapping the display and holding your finger down.

Here's how to turn it on:

1. Scroll down until you see 'Magnification' on the list of 'Vision enhancements'.

2. Click on it once and toggle the feature on in the next screen.

Bold font and font size

You can also make text more legible on the watch by bolding it or making it bigger.

To turn on bold text:

1. Find 'Bold text' near the bottom of the 'Vision enhancements' list.

2. Toggle it on and all text will immediately change to bold.

To increase the size for improved visibility:

1. Scroll all the way down the list of 'Vision enhancements'.

2. Tap on 'Font size'.

3. Adjust the size of the font using the slider or with the plus and minus buttons.

Vibration watch

With this clever setting, you can get the current time as vibrations you'll feel on your wrist. When the screen's on, tap the watch with two fingers once for the hour, and tap twice for the minute.

Here’s how to apply this feature:

1. Open the Settings menu.

2. Scroll down and tap 'Accessibility'.

3. Select 'Advanced settings' near the bottom of the list.

4. Tap 'Vibration watch' and toggle it on in the next screen.

5. Once turned on, choose which vibration type you'd prefer: 'Digits' or 'Terse'.

The digits type gives you the current time in decimal format. A long vibration means 10, whereas a short vibration means 1. The terse type gives the minutes briefly, so two short vibrations will mean a quarter hour.

Once you've chosen which you prefer, scroll further to select the vibration speed. There are five settings ranging from 'Very slow' to 'Very fast'.

The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra, and most Samsung smart watches for that matter, also cater for people with profound or partial hearing loss. All hearing assistive features can be found in the watch's Settings:

1. Swipe down from the top of the home screen (watch face).

2. Select the gear icon to open Settings.

3. Scroll down the list and tap 'Accessibility'.

4. Choose 'Hearing enhancements'.

Once you've navigated to the 'Hearing enhancements' screen, you'll find the following features you can turn on:

• Mute all sounds: Toggling this on will turn off all sounds from the watch.

• Mono audio: If you have affected hearing in one ear or a single earbud's more convenient, turning this feature on will switch audio from stereo to mono.

• Left/right sound balance: If you have partial hearing loss in one ear, you can adjust how much audio is outputted from each side of your wireless headphones or earbuds. You can adjust this using a slider on the watch's screen.

For people who struggle with poor mobility, there are some great accessibility features that can still let you enjoy the full Galaxy Watch experience. Follow these instructions to find and personalise these functions:

1. When on the main watch face screen, place a finger on the top of the display and swipe down.

2. In the menu that appears, tap on the gear button to open Settings.

3. Swipe up to scroll down the list and then select 'Accessibility'.

4. Choose 'Interaction and dexterity' about halfway down the list.

Universal gestures

This feature lets you control the watch using just the hand you're wearing it on. You can use these one-handed gestures to do a few things, including pressing buttons and scrolling the screen:

• Make a fist: This gesture lets you select and open items.

• Make fist twice: Do this to activate ‘Universal gestures’ and open the Action menu, where you can access apps and much more. It's dynamic too, "adjusting its content based on whichever screen is currently open when the user activates the Action menu" according to Samsung.

• Pinch: Make this gesture to move to the next item when scrolling through messages or photos.

• Double pinch: Allows you to move to the previous item.

What's more, you can change any of the actions of these four gestures to personalise the watch to better suit your needs.

Please note: This feature is only possible on Samsung watches running One UI Watch 5.0.

Touch settings

The touchscreens on most smart devices these days allow us to perform quick actions and interact better with our tech. But for people who suffer from hand tremors or other mobility issues, it can make using devices like smart watches difficult and frustrating.

Samsung smart watches offer a few touch settings which help users reduce mistakes and personalise interactions for improved control:

• Touch and hold delay: This feature lets you adjust how long it takes for a continuous touch to be recognised as a touch and hold, from between 0.3 to 1.5 seconds.

• Tap duration: You can change how long an interaction needs to be held to be recognised as a tap. This can help to reduce unintended tap actions, and ranges from 0.1 to 4 seconds.

• Ignore repeated touches: This allows you to set a duration for the watch to ignore any repeated taps after the first touch. This also ranges from 0.1 to 4 seconds.

There are even more accessibility features designed to help people who suffer from vision impairments, hearing loss, and mobility issues:

Time to take action

A Samsung smart watch will sometimes display messages asking you to do something, but only remain on-screen for a few seconds — like notifications or the volume controller. You can adjust how long these show on the screen so you won't miss anything important:

1. Tap on 'Accessibility' from the Settings menu.

2. Scroll down and select 'Advanced settings'.

3. Choose 'Time to take action' and pick the length of time you'd prefer from the list, ranging from 10 seconds to two minutes.

Accessibility shortcuts

If you want to access and adjust accessibility features faster, rather than via Settings every time, there are shortcuts you can activate. These will allow you to go straight to the 'Accessibility' menu by pressing the watch's home key twice, or by triple tapping the screen with two fingers.

Here's how to turn these shortcuts on:

1. Navigate to 'Advanced settings' by opening the Settings menu and selecting 'Accessibility'.

2. At the top, there's a 'Home button shortcuts' heading with 'Double press' and 'Triple press' options to choose from.

We hope all those neat accessibility features will help to remove barriers and empower you going forward.