The performance of iris recognition reduces when the images are captured at a distance. However, such images generally contain periocular region which can be utilized for person recognition. In this research, we propose a novel context switching algorithm that dynamically selects the best descriptor for color iris and periocular regions. Using predefined protocols, the performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated on UBIRIS V2 and FRGC datasets, and the results show improved performance compared to existing algorithms. © 2015 IEEE.