Accessibility settings that can improve the visibility of Liquid Glass, the new interface design introduced in iOS 26, focus mainly on addressing its transparency, contrast, legibility, and motion effects. These settings can help users who find the Liquid Glass interface difficult to see clearly, especially those with visual impairments or sensitivity to motion. Here are the key accessibility options and how they enhance the experience with Liquid Glass:
Reduce Transparency:
When enabled via Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Reduce Transparency, this setting makes the translucent and frosted glass effects more opaque. Instead of seeing content through the semi-transparent UI elements, backgrounds and buttons get a solid, darker backdrop. This change improves readability and visual clarity by reducing the visual blending of foreground elements and background content. It essentially replaces the Liquid Glass effect with a more traditional, less visually busy UI. Users with difficulty distinguishing layers or those who prefer a simpler look find this setting highly beneficial.
Increase Contrast:
Also found under Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size, Increase Contrast adjusts the UI by adding dark or light borders around buttons and other interactive elements. This setting maintains some transparency so the Liquid Glass effect is still visible but the edges and shapes of elements become much clearer. The contrast boost helps separate UI elements from the background, making the interface easier to navigate and reducing eye strain caused by blurred or smeared effects. This option is a middle ground for users who want to keep the aesthetic but enhance visibility.
Bold Text:
Bold Text improves the legibility of textual content by making the fonts thicker. Since text in Liquid Glass can sometimes blend into the complex, translucent backgrounds, adding boldness improves reading clarity. It is enabled via Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Bold Text.
Button Shapes:
This option adds distinct shapes and outlines to buttons, improving their recognition and differentiation from other UI elements. This setting makes it easier to identify actionable items on the screen within the Liquid Glass aesthetic. It can be toggled on under Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Button Shapes.
On/Off Labels:
For switches and toggles within the interface, enabling On/Off Labels adds additional visual cues (such as text labels) to improve understanding of the current state of controls. This reduces confusion that might arise from the glassy UI. It is found in the same menu under Accessibility settings.
Reduce Motion:
iOS 26's Liquid Glass includes more animations and motion effects, which some users find disorienting or uncomfortable. Turning on Reduce Motion via Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Reduce Motion minimizes screen animations, disables elastic transitions, and reduces visual clutter caused by moving elements. This helps reduce symptoms of motion sickness and enhances usability for sensitive users.
Prefer Crossfade Transitions:
To further reduce visual motion, the Prefer Crossfade Transitions setting replaces some of the more jarring animations with smoother crossfade effects. This lessens abrupt visual changes, making navigation more comfortable without losing the dynamic feel of the interface.
Customization of Wallpaper and Home Screen:
Adjusting wallpaper colors and customization options can indirectly improve Liquid Glass visibility. Using wallpapers with less brightness or less detail behind transparent UI elements helps make the Liquid Glass foreground stand out more.
Apple's Liquid Glass is designed to respond automatically to some of these system-level accessibility settings without extra developer input, so these adjustments improve usability for a broad range of users. The default Liquid Glass design emphasizes layered translucent effects that can be visually appealing but challenging for some to read and interact with. Accessibility settings provide essential controls to tune visibility, contrast, text clarity, and motion, balancing aesthetic appeal with practical use.
To summarize:
- Reduce Transparency makes UI elements more opaque and legible by removing most translucency.
- Increase Contrast adds outlines and enhances separation of UI elements from the background while preserving some transparency.
- Bold Text clarifies reading by making fonts thicker.
- Button Shapes and On/Off Labels add visual cues to improve recognition and comprehension of interactive elements.
- Reduce Motion and Prefer Crossfade Transitions tone down animations to reduce discomfort and distraction.
- Wallpaper and Home Screen customization help provide better contrast backgrounds for the interface.