MyDisplay trial - get BBC Online your way

MyDisplay User Guides

These demonstrations, available as videos or text, show you how to use MyDisplay.

• Video demonstrations:
• Video guide to using MyDisplay themes
• Video guide to creating your own MyDisplay theme
• Video guide to customising MyDisplay themes
• NEW: Video guide to using the MyDisplay toolbar
• Guide to turning MyDisplay off
• Text user guides:
• Text guide to using MyDisplay themes
• Text guide to creating your own MyDisplay theme
• Text guide to customising MyDisplay themes
• NEW: Text guide to using the MyDisplay toolbar
• Guide to turning MyDisplay off

This demonstration shows you how to select themes using MyDisplay, and the effects this has on BBC Online.

MyDisplay has a large number of themes that the BBC have created by talking to many people about what preferences work best for them. However, you may want to create a theme specially for you. This demonstration shows how to do this.

If you find a MyDisplay theme that almost suits your preferences, but doesn't quite, you can tweak the theme by following this demonstration.

If you would like to temporarily turn MyDisplay off for some pages on bbc.co.uk, the new MyDisplay toolbar allows you to do this and much more. Find out what it can do for you by following this demonstration.

If you find that MyDisplay doesn't suit your needs, you can turn it off by following this demonstration.

Go back to the MyDisplay home page by typing 'bbc.co.uk/mydisplay' into the address bar.

Click on the 'Stop MyDisplay' button and MyDisplay will be turned off.

Turning MyDisplay off will take you to a goodbye page that encourages you to give us feedback on your experience of using MyDisplay, and how well it fitted your needs.

You can now use the rest of BBC Online as you would normally.

This demonstration shows you how to select themes using MyDisplay, and the effects this has on BBC Online.

To start MyDisplay go to the MyDisplay trial homepage and click on the 'Start MyDisplay' button.

A tooltip will appear while MyDisplay is loading and the MyDisplay Control Panel will appear.

In the Control Panel you have the option of doing three things:

• You can select a theme from the groups at the top of the panel,
• create your own theme,
• or Sign In if you have already saved a theme in a BBC account.

In this demonstration I am going to select one of the themes from the groups at the top of the panel.

The theme groups have been created from talking with people with various different types of preference.

There are themes that we have created to help people with limited vision, people with ADHD, people who would like text to be easier to read, people who have Asperger's, and people who have dyslexia.

There is also a 'BBC Original' theme which turns off MyDisplay and takes you back to the original look of BBC websites.

In this demonstration, I'll choose a theme to help people with Dyslexia by clicking on 'Dyslexia'.

This brings up a choice of four themes which people with Dyslexia have told us may help them.

You'll see MyDisplay has chosen 'Blue' as an initial choice, and you'll see that the page behind the MyDisplay Control Panel has changed to show what it would look like in this Blue theme.

You can scroll down and up the page to see if you like the settings in the theme.

If you don't like the settings (maybe the colours aren't right for you) you can click any of the other themes to see if they are more to your liking.

I'll click on 'Green' to show the page in the Green theme.

If this is the combination of colours that works best for you all you need to do is click on 'Save>' to save the theme and click on 'Finish' to use your new display settings.

The MyDisplay Control Panel disappears and you can click on any of the links to continue using BBC Online, with all pages now using your display settings.

In this demonstration I'll click on the BBC logo to go to the BBC Homepage.

You'll see this now displays in the Green theme.

Or I can click on 'News' to go to the BBC News Homepage.

This also displays in the new theme.

We hope that this has helped you understand MyDisplay.

MyDisplay has a large number of themes that the BBC have created by talking to many people about what preferences work best for them. However, you may want to create a theme specially for you. This demonstration shows how to do this.

To create your own MyDisplay theme, go to the MyDisplay trial homepage and click on the 'Start MyDisplay' button.

In the Control Panel click on 'Create'.

This brings up the customise screen showing all the settings you can change grouped into: text, layout, links, colours and images.

In this demonstration I am going to make a theme which changes the way text is displayed.

You'll see that 'Text size' is already open showing the available text sizes you can choose from smallest to largest.

I'll click on 'Use Very Large Text Size' to select a text size towards the top of the range.

You'll see that, like with the themes, the page behind the Control Panel has changed to show what it would look like with this text size.

Next I'll click on 'Text spacing'.

This shows three different sizes of text spacing I could choose.

On this occasion, I'll keep the original spacing.

Next I'll click on 'Font'.

This shows six different fonts I could choose.

Each choice is written in the font it represents to help you choose.

I'll click on 'Comic Sans' as many people find this font easiest to read.

Again, the page behind the Control Panel has changed to show the page using this font.

Next I'll click on 'Style'.

This shows two options: the original style the page was written in, and a choice to change the style of all text to lower case which some people might find easier to read.

I'll choose lower case.

And, as usual, the page behind the Control Panel has changed to show the page using this style.

If you don't like the page updating every time you make a change you can turn preview off by clicking on the tick.

I'll do this before we explore the other settings.

Next I'll click on 'Layout'.

This shows two options: the original layout of the page, which may have multiple columns, or a list view, which takes the content in those columns and puts them in one long list for simplicity.

You might also use this list view if the text size and spacing you have chosen breaks the original layout of the page.

Next I'll click on 'Links'.

This shows four options: the original colouring for links on the page, and three other options which make links stand out from the page. I'll skip over colours for now and click on 'Images'.

This shows three options: the original use of images on the page, an option to display pictures with their text description, and an option to remove all pictures, replacing them with their text descriptions.

I'll save the theme I have created from the choices I've made for how text should display.

And click 'Finish' to use my new display settings.

I can now go into any page to see the effect of my choices.

I'll choose iPlayer.

You'll see this displays in my new theme.

We hope that this has helped you to understand how to create your own MyDisplay theme.

If you find a MyDisplay theme that almost suits your preferences, but doesn't quite, you can tweak the theme by following this demonstration.

To create a customised MyDisplay theme go to the MyDisplay trial homepage and click on the 'Start MyDisplay' button.

In the Control Panel choose a group of themes to base your customised theme on.

In this demonstration I'm going to create a theme based around those for people with limited vision.

So I'll start by selecting the 'Limited Vision' group.

This brings up a choice of four themes which people with limited vision have told us may help them.

You'll see MyDisplay has chosen 'Limited Vision 1' as an initial choice.

This theme has the yellow font that I'd like, but also displays pages in a list view.

I'll scroll the page behind the Control Panel down to see if I like this list view.

Having checked the way pages would look, I decide I'd prefer the original multi-column view.

So I click on 'Limited Vision 2' which has the same colours but without the list view.

The page behind the Control Panel looks better but I'd prefer the font to be a little bigger.

It looks like none of the available themes has the combination of colours and larger font that I'd prefer.

So I'll need to create a new theme, or customise an existing theme.

As this 'Limited Vision 2' theme has everything I want except the larger font I'll save this theme, and see if I can customise the font.

I'll click on 'Save>' to save the theme.

On the next screen I can click on 'Customise theme >' to make changes to individual settings in the theme I've saved.

This brings up two options for customising the theme:

• I can choose from three slight variations on the theme I've chosen, such as the theme with a different background colour or font colour;
• or I can choose to customise the individual settings in my theme.

As none of the variations will give me what I'd like I'll click on 'Customise'.

This brings up the customise screen showing all the settings you can change.

You'll see that 'Text Size' is already open showing the available text sizes you can choose from smallest to largest.

The size which is in my current theme is shown in black with a tick.

I'll choose one size larger than the current size by clicking on 'Use Very Large Text Size'.

I'll check the page behind the Control Panel which has changed to show what it would look like with this text size.

This now looks fine to me now so I'll click on 'Save Theme>' to save the theme.

And I'll click on 'Finish' to use my new display settings.

I can now go into any page to see the effect of my choices.

I'll choose 'Sport'.

This displays in my new theme.

And I'll click on 'TV' to see what the theme looks like on other pages.

Here's the BBC TV schedule in my theme.

We hope that this has helped you understand how to customise MyDisplay themes.

If you would like to temporarily turn MyDisplay off for some pages on bbc.co.uk, the new MyDisplay toolbar allows you to do this and much more. Find out what it can do for you by following this demonstration.

A number of MyDisplay users told us that they want to use MyDisplay but not on every page of bbc.co.uk.

Some BBC websites are already in the colours they want so they want to turn MyDisplay off on those sites for a while without losing their MyDisplay theme.

This demonstration lets you see how to use the MyDisplay toolbar to do this and many more things.

The MyDisplay toolbar appears at the top of all bbc.co.uk pages when you have started MyDisplay.

You may want to turn MyDisplay off for a while when you're visiting a page.

Maybe this is because someone else is using your computer for a while, or because you want to see if the page's original design and colours would work for you, or because the page isn't working well through MyDisplay.

For example, if I like the ADHD theme on the homepage but know the iPlayer colours already work for me, I'd go to iPlayer and click on 'Turn MyDisplay off' on the MyDisplay toolbar.

The page will reload in its original colours. Now I can see and use iPlayer in its original design.

And it's easy to turn MyDisplay back on when I want. Just click on 'Turn MyDisplay on' in the MyDisplay toolbar and MyDisplay will use your preferred theme again.

Let's see what else the MyDisplay toolbar can do.

If you decide that you want to change your MyDisplay theme, you used to have to go back to the MyDisplay site and 'Start MyDisplay' from there.

Now you can bring up the MyDisplay Control Panel without leaving the page you are viewing. Just click on 'Open MyDisplay Control Panel' in the MyDisplay toolbar and the MyDisplay Control Panel will appear so you can change your theme.

Here I'll decide to make a small change to my theme to go from ADHD1 to ADHD2.

Just click on the 'ADHD' group of themes, then click on 'ADHD2'. Save your theme, and click 'Finish' as usual. The page reloads in the ADHD2 theme.

You can also use the MyDisplay toolbar to let the BBC know if you come across any pages on bbc.co.uk that look broken in MyDisplay.

For example, 'listen live' on radio pages does not currently work in MyDisplay.

If you wanted to report this to the BBC just click on 'Report broken page' in the MyDisplay toolbar and a box will appear. You can type in what the problem is and send it to the MyDisplay team. When you type in the problem you don't need to say which page it is on. The toolbar will add this information for you.

We'll review all broken page reports and try and fix them in the future.

Finally, if you think you don't need the MyDisplay toolbar, just click on 'Close MyDisplay toolbar' in the MyDisplay toolbar and it will disappear.

If you then find you want it again just 'Start MyDisplay' on the MyDisplay site, and when you save any changes to your theme the MyDisplay toolbar will reappear.

We hope that you find the MyDisplay toolbar useful.

If you find that MyDisplay doesn't suit your needs, you can turn it off by following this demonstration.

Go back to the MyDisplay home page by typing 'bbc.co.uk/mydisplay' into the address bar.

Click on the 'Stop MyDisplay' button and MyDisplay will be turned off.

Turning MyDisplay off will take you to a goodbye page that encourages you to give us feedback on your experience of using MyDisplay, and how well it fitted your needs.

You can now use the rest of BBC Online as you would normally.