A lot of problems are caused by students tinkering around in the Chromebook accessibility settings. Here’s how to overcome the issue.
There are several problems we regularly have reported from our Chromebook users, these are:
- My Chromebook’s cursor is bigger than usual.
- The screen looks like a photo negative.
- The screen is black and white.
- The shift key doesn’t work properly.
- I can’t drag windows properly.
- My Chromebook is talking to me. Make it stop!
Most often these problems are the result of someone changing the Chromebook’s accessibility settings — unless of course no-one else can hear the Chromebook talking, in which case you’re probably on the wrong website.
You can enable or disable the accessibility settings by going to menu and clicking Advanced Settings on your Chromebook.
There isn’t a way to completely stop students tinkering with the accessibility settings but you can, ironically, make them less accessible by hiding the option from the desktop system tray menu. To do this uncheck the Show accessibility options in the system menu option.
Thanks for the useful information. A point that your article misses, I think, is the important role accessibility features play for many users. A few introductory sentences could frame your article in terms of universal access, rather than in terms of the problems accessibility features present to (fully-abled) users who don’t know how the features work. For example:
“Chrome OS provides several accessibility features that empower users to more fully use their Chromebooks. For users who don’t have experience with accessibility, these features can lead to confusing or suboptimal user experiences. In this article, I’ll describe the effects these features have, and show you how to turn them off.”
Also, you may already have an article on how to turn accessibility features on and to help students who want to use them, but if not, you should definitely write one!
Thanks for considering my comment,
Peter