Northumbria University

The IT Services Department within Northumbria University is one of the most important departments within the university. It is responsible for the provision, maintenance and development of a wide range of computing facilities for staff and students.

It deals with the campus wide network, links to external networks, desktop computing , local systems support and the co-ordination of IT-related projects around the university

Our Brief

Our brief was to help comply with the legal obligations of the website as well as ensure that the information provided on the website is as accessible as possible to a wider range of people. 

Our Solution

With Recite, a link is placed on a website, for example ‘click for accessibility/read text’. Once this option has been selected Recite will automatically translate text to speech, high contrast colour schemes, enlarge words and allow dictionary definitions. The end result is a more accessible website compliant with government regulation. 

The Business Impact

 Jed Woodhouse, Director for IT Services at Northumbria University says:

“Northumbria chose Recite as it was unique in terms of its features and the way that it operates. Recite enables websites to read themselves aloud without any special software or hardware on the user’s machine. This makes our website more accessible to visitors who are visually impaired. It also helps public sector organisations such as ourselves comply with the requirements of the Equality Act 2010

Additional features allow the user to change the appearance of the website i.e. text-only view, set the text and background colour and display a coloured ruler, all of which are useful for visitors with dyslexia. Very little work was required by our internal web team in terms of integration.”