Screen magnifier

Assistive software that enlarges a portion of the screen display to make content visible for people with low vision. Users navigate the magnified view by panning with the mouse or keyboard, seeing only a fraction of the full screen at any time. Popular screen magnifiers include ZoomText, Windows Magnifier, and macOS Zoom. While magnification enables visual access, it introduces interaction costs — users must constantly pan to maintain context, experience blurring at high zoom levels, and face a fundamental trade-off between detail (high zoom) and overview (low zoom) that impacts tasks like reading charts, navigating complex layouts, and comparing spatially separated information.