How to Remove the Ease of Access Button on Logon Screen in Windows 10

The Ease of Access button on the logon screen can be helpful to people who have certain impairments, but people who don’t have a use for the accessibility features often prefer to turn these features off. The Ease of Access offers a dozen options that you can configure, including onscreen keyboard, Magnifier app that makes it easy for visually impaired people to read the screen, and a basic screen-reader called Narrator that reads dialog boxes and window controls. Ease of Access offers the following 12 options in Windows 10 related to vision, hearing and interaction.

Why You May Want to Remove Ease of Access Button

Perhaps the most common scenario why organizations want to remove the Ease of Access button is when Windows 10 computers are configured as kiosks, but individuals and organizations also have other reasons for removing this button.

Kids often click around with the mouse on their home computer and accidentally turn on some of the Ease of Access options. For example, they can turn on High Contrast, which turns the default white background of applications into black. On the Windows 10 logon screen, clicking the Ease of Access button gives you the following options.

You may see more buttons on your computer than what you see in the above screenshot. Because this screenshot is from a Virtual Machine, it shows only two buttons: Power and Ease of Access. A desktop computer usually have some additional buttons, at least the Network button.

High Contrast can be useful for people who are unable to easily distinguish color contrasts on the screen. For people who don’t have this issue, the High Contrast screen can put more stress on their eyes, or they may just find it weird because they are not used to it. Here are a couple of examples of what the High Contrast screen looks like in Notepad and Microsoft Word.

Sometimes people hit certain hotkeys (keyboard combinations) which turns the Magnifier or the Narrator on. Imagine your computer suddenly start reading out load what’s on your screen because you accidentally turned on the Narrator. It can be a big nuisance and also embarrassing when you are giving a presentation, or sitting in the waiting room at your doctor’s office. That’s when you have to try and quickly figure out how to turn the Narrator off. If you are presenting a Webinar and turn the volume off to silence the Narrator, then no one can hear you. Needless to say, it’s not fun to be in such situations. Here are a couple of key combinations that are good to know.

• The Windows logo key  + CTRL + ENTER key combination will turn the Narrator on and off.
• The Windows logo key  + Plus (+) key will turn the Magnifier on. Use the Windows logo key + ESC key to turn it off.

How to Remove the Ease of Access Button

I have seen many discussions on the Internet forums on how to disable the Ease of Access button on the Windows 10 logon screen by changing the permissions for utilman.exe file, so the button becomes inoperable. The icon would still be there, but if you click the button it won’t do anything. Actually, there is a simple way to literally remove the Ease of Access button from the logon screen completely, rather than disabling it. Here’s how.

1. Log in to Windows 10 with an account that has administrative privileges.
   NOTE: I’ve tested these steps on Windows 10 Enterprise. If you have tried these steps successfully on Windows 10 Pro, please let me know in the comments section.
2. In Windows 10 search box type regedit and press Enter.
   
3. When prompted if you want to allow the app to make changes to your device, select Yes.
4. First you should backup the entire Windows registry. Highlight the blue Computer icon in the top left-hand corner, then right-click and select Export.
   
5. Name the file something like Full Registry Backup. The exported file will have the extension .reg. Click Save.
6. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Embedded\EmbeddedLogon.
   NOTE: If EmbeddedLogon folder doesn’t exist, right-click Windows Embedded folder and create a new Key called EmbeddedLogon under the Windows Embedded folder.
7. Right-click EmbeddedLogon folder in the left-hand pane and select New -> DWORD (32(bit) Value.
8. For the name, type BrandingNeutral and then press Enter.
9. Double-click BrandingNeutral and in the Value data box enter a decimal value of 8.
10. Click OK and close the Registry Editor.
11. Restart the computer.
12. The Ease of Access button should no longer be on the logon screen.

Disabling Other Options

You can also disable other options that are available on the logon screen, such as Power, Language, and Switch user. Disabling some or these options is necessary when Windows 10 is configured as a kiosk.

If the Ease of Access button is still there after you made the suggested change, check the spellings and case-sensitivity of the entries in the registry. For example, make sure that in addition to being case-sensitive, EmbeddedLogon doesn’t have a space between the words Embedded and Logon. Also remember to restart the computer after you make the registry change.

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