FirstRail prides itself on being a company that goes the extra mile to maintain communication and quality of service.
Part of their commitment to providing the best possible online experience includes the additional layer of inclusive software across their digital landscape.
By utilising accessibility and language technology solutions from Recite Me, FirstRail has supported over 35,000 people to read and understand the content on their website’s barrier-free in the last 12months.
The unique assistive toolbar helps everyone across gwr.com, southwesternrailway.com and avantiwestcoast.co.uk websites to customise their online experience to suit their own individual needs.
Data shows that 284,047 pieces of content were read aloud using the text-to-speech engine and over 1million web pages were translated into a different language, including Mandarin, French, and German. Other support tools include styling and reading assistance. 20,875 styling changes were made in total, including alterations to font type, size, and colour, and overall colour contrast between background and foreground.
Studies show that 1 in 5 people have impairments that make accessing online information challenging and excluding 20% of the population is not something that the FirstRail team were prepared to accept.
Subhash Mishra, Head of Digital Strategy at FirstRail commented, “We chose to install the Recite Me assistive toolbar to make our website not simply accessible, but to be truly inclusive to all. Accessing the internet can be a challenge for some key customer groups. This includes customers who may have decreased vision, struggle with literacy, are autistic, speak and/or read English as a second language, suffer from attention disorders, have a learning difficulty, or are affected by physical disabilities.
“It is a pleasure to work with a specialist provider like Recite Me who takes great care to understand customer needs. We are proud to be a digitally inclusive company that values each and every online visitor”
Our website accessibility toolbar includes fully customisable styling features, reading aids, screen reader and translation tools, meaning their web pages can now be consumed in a way that is personalised and tailor-made to each unique website visitor.
