WordPress plugin

Accessibility profiles

How the four accessibility profiles in the AccessYes widget work, what settings each one applies, and how visitors can combine profiles with individual adjustments.

Updated

In this article: What the four accessibility profiles are, what each one does, and how visitors use them. Covers the Seizure Safe, Low Vision, ADHD, and Cognitive Disability profiles in detail.

Accessibility profiles are one-click preset configurations that appear at the top of the AccessYes widget panel. Each profile applies a group of settings at once, giving visitors a fast starting point without needing to configure tools individually.

Profiles are especially useful for visitors who know what kind of support they need but don’t want to spend time hunting through individual controls every time they visit a site.

How profiles work

When a visitor activates a profile, the widget applies a predefined combination of settings immediately. The page updates in real time, and the visitor’s preferences are saved to localStorage so they carry over to future visits and other pages on the site.

A visitor can activate only one profile at a time — selecting a second profile replaces the first. But profiles and individual tools are not mutually exclusive. A visitor can activate a profile and then fine-tune from there: turning on an additional tool the profile doesn’t include, or adjusting the font size beyond what the profile sets.

Activating a profile does not lock the individual tools. It simply gives the visitor a pre-populated starting configuration.

To deactivate a profile, the visitor clicks it again. The toggle turns off and the associated settings are removed. Any individual adjustments the visitor made on top of the profile remain active.

The four profiles

Seizure safe profile

The seizure safe profile targets visitors who are sensitive to flashing content and motion. It applies:

  • Pause animations — stops all CSS animations, transitions, and auto-playing media on the page

That is the primary setting. The purpose is narrow and deliberate: remove the visual triggers most commonly associated with photosensitive epilepsy. It does not change fonts, contrast, or layout.

This profile is appropriate for any visitor who finds moving content distracting or triggering, not only those with epilepsy. Some visitors with migraines, vestibular disorders, or ADHD also benefit from a static, motion-free page.

Low vision profile

The low vision profile helps visitors who can see but need content to be larger and clearer. It applies:

  • Font size increase — raises the base font size
  • High contrast — maximises contrast between text and backgrounds
  • Reading guide — overlays a horizontal rule that follows the cursor to help track which line the visitor is reading

Together these changes make text substantially easier to read for visitors with reduced visual acuity, cataracts, or age-related vision changes. The combination of larger text and high contrast addresses the two most common reading barriers for this group.

ADHD profile

The ADHD profile reduces visual noise and supports attention and focus. It applies:

  • Pause animations — removes moving elements that can pull attention away from the content
  • Reading guide — provides a visual anchor that helps the visitor track their position on the page

The profile does not change text or colours. Its purpose is to create a calmer, less distracting reading environment rather than to change the visual appearance of content.

Visitors with ADHD often report that background motion and cluttered pages make it harder to stay focused. Pausing animations and adding a reading line addresses both issues without altering the site’s fundamental layout or style.

Cognitive disability profile

The cognitive disability profile applies adjustments that reduce cognitive load and make pages easier to process. It applies:

  • Readable font — switches body text to the OpenDyslexic typeface, designed to reduce visual letter transposition for people with dyslexia
  • Highlight titles — adds a visual highlight to all headings so the page structure is easier to scan
  • Highlight links — makes hyperlinks more visually prominent so they are easier to identify

The profile helps visitors who find dense, unstructured text harder to read. Clear heading structure and prominent links reduce the effort needed to navigate and extract meaning from a page.

Profiles and individual tools together

Profiles are a shortcut, not a ceiling. A visitor using the Low Vision profile can still increase the font size further using the font size control, or switch on the readable font if they also have dyslexia. The profile and the individual tool work together — the profile sets the baseline and the individual control adjusts on top of it.

This design means that profiles do not need to cover every possible combination of needs. They cover the most common configurations. Visitors with more specific requirements can always extend or modify from there.

Can site owners disable profiles?

Profiles are part of the Features section of the AccessYes settings screen. Each profile can be enabled or disabled individually from AccessYes → Features in the WordPress admin.

Disabling a profile removes it from the widget panel entirely. Visitors who relied on that profile will need to configure the equivalent settings manually.

Important

Disabling a profile reduces the accessibility of your site. Only remove a profile if there is a specific technical reason to do so. The convenience of one-click presets is valuable to visitors who find manual configuration difficult or time-consuming.