Six in the evening, eighth patient of the day. You glance at your phone between sessions to see who is next and find yourself holding it at arm’s length to read it. Two appointments in the diary are almost the same colour, and you cannot tell whether the 6:40 confirmed or missed last week.
None of that shows up in a software demo. It shows up on a Tuesday, at the end of a long list. Added together, it costs more attention than it seems.
The screen is work equipment too
Nobody buys a treatment table without lying on it. We check the height, the padding, the width. Software gets chosen differently: it has a diary, it has notes, it has billing, the price is fine. “Can I read this comfortably at six in the evening?” rarely makes the list.
Yet the system gets opened dozens of times a day, often standing up, often at a glance, often with a patient waiting. Accessibility in physiotherapy software is not a feature for a niche audience. It decides whether a quick check between two patients takes three seconds or twenty.
Who needs this (more people than you think)
- Anyone past their mid-forties. Presbyopia arrives for everyone, usually a little before we admit it. Twelve-pixel text on a phone becomes work.
- Colour-blind practitioners. Roughly one man in twelve has some difficulty telling red from green. In a practice of five physios, having one on the team is not unlikely.
- Front desk staff. In a busy practice the person who uses the diary most is often not a clinician, and not always someone with perfect eyesight and a monitor at the right height.
- Home-visit physios. A phone in bright sunlight on the pavement, brightness at maximum, and light grey text still disappears.
- People with migraine or dizziness. You treat vestibular patients; you know what on-screen movement does to someone who is sensitive. Sliding menus and page transitions genuinely bother them.
When colour is the only signal
Practice software uses a lot of colour, and for good reason: colour is fast. In Physioly, for example, each patient can have their own colour in the diary, appointments change appearance with their status (confirmed, missed), and the finance screens separate money in and money out in green and red.
The trouble starts when colour is the only way to get the information. For someone who cannot separate red from green, “paid” and “overdue” can be the same brownish label. And they do not always realise they are missing something — they just conclude the software is confusing.
This applies to your own habits too. If you mark post-surgical patients orange and neuro patients purple in the diary, write the legend down somewhere. The day a colleague covers your list, the key exists only in your head.
A ten-minute accessibility test for any software
It works for any product, ours included. Do it during the trial, with your real diary — an empty diary makes everything look readable.
- Increase the text to about 125% and open the week view. Is it still usable, or does it become a squeezed column of truncated names?
- Find one missed appointment and one confirmed one. Is there text or an icon saying so, or does only the colour change?
- Open it on your phone, outdoors, in daylight. Can you read the time and the patient’s name without looking for shade?
- Try pinching to zoom. Many installed phone apps block the gesture, which leaves an in-app size setting as the only way out.
- Move through a form using only the Tab key. Can you see which field you are in?
- Ask whether the setting is stored per device or per account. It matters a great deal on a shared front-desk computer.
How it works in Physioly
In Physioly it lives in one place: click your photo in the top-right corner, then Accessibility. There is no save button — every choice changes the screen immediately, because the only way to know whether 125% is enough is to see it.
| Option | What it does | Who it helps |
|---|---|---|
| Text size | 100%, 110%, 125% or 140% — scales the whole screen, not only the letters | Presbyopia, a distant monitor, small phones |
| Colours for colour blindness | Protanopia, deuteranopia or tritanopia. Corrects the colours so that things which looked alike separate again | Colour-blind users |
| Higher contrast | Sharper text and borders | Home visits, screens in sunlight, tired eyes |
| Reduce motion | Turns off on-screen movement and transitions | Migraine, dizziness, motion sensitivity |
One detail about the colour modes: they do not show you “how a colour-blind person sees”, which would not help anyone who is colour-blind. They do the opposite — take the difference the person cannot perceive and push it into colours they can. The panel includes a row of sample labels (paid, overdue, pending, scheduled, assessment) so you can switch between modes and see which one separates best for your eyes.
The setting belongs to the device, not the account. That was deliberate: you can keep your phone at 125%, where text is tight, and the clinic monitor at normal size, with the same login. The downside is that on a new computer you set it again.
Try it with your own diary, at your own size
Diary, clinical notes and finances, with larger text and colour correction built in.
Create a free account → No credit card. The first 7 days have no limits at all.What is not solved yet
It would be easy to stop at the previous paragraph. There are limits, though, and you should know them first:
- We have not been through a formal accessibility audit. Physioly carries no WCAG badge, and screen-reader use has not been tested end to end. If you rely on a screen reader, test carefully during the unlimited first week before you move your records.
- The colour filter changes everything, images included. Photos of skin, scars or bruising will not show their true colour while a colour-blind mode is on. Switch it off when the colour of an image is clinical information.
- At 140% on a phone, wide tables scroll sideways. There is only so much room; what does not fit, scrolls.
- Patients do not get this panel. The accessibility menu sits inside the system, for the people who work in it. The card a patient opens on their own phone does not have the button.
If any of these matters in your case, tell us. A good share of what changes in Physioly comes from what users send through the “Feedback and improvements” menu.
Questions we get asked
How do I make the text bigger in Physioly?
Click your photo in the top-right corner, then Accessibility. Under “Text size” you can choose 100%, 110%, 125% or 140%. The whole screen scales with it, not only the letters, and the change applies immediately.
Does Physioly have a colour-blind mode?
Yes. The same Accessibility panel offers colour correction for protanopia (trouble with red), deuteranopia (trouble with green) and tritanopia (trouble with blue and yellow). The filter redistributes colours so that statuses and labels that looked the same separate again.
Do accessibility settings apply to the whole practice team?
No. They are saved on the device where they were made, not on the account. Each person adjusts their own computer or phone, and one account can have large text on the phone and normal size on the monitor. On a new device you set them again.
Does the colour-blind mode change clinical photos?
Yes. The filter acts on the whole screen, so images change colour while it is on. When the colour of a photo is clinical information — skin, scars, bruising — switch the mode off before you assess it.
Is Physioly WCAG certified?
No. The system has text size, colour, contrast and motion settings, but it has not had a formal audit and has not been tested end to end with a screen reader. Anyone who depends on assistive technology should test it during the first seven days, which have no usage limits.