Booking a school place, checking a bin collection day, signing up for an adult learning course. These are simple tasks for most residents, but for those with visual impairments, dyslexia, or limited English, finding that information online can be a real barrier. Sunderland City Council has worked with Recite Me to change that, giving residents access to an assistive toolbar on its website. In 2025 alone, 67,584 residents used it.
A City Committed to Reaching Everyone
In 2023, Sunderland launched its Digital Inclusion Action Plan, with a vision for services designed for all. Alongside accessibility audits and structural website improvements, conversations across council services kept surfacing the same challenge: residents experience digital services in very different ways.
As Nicol McConnell, Digital Inclusion Lead at Sunderland City Council, explains:
“Through conversations with colleagues across different services, a number of common challenges were identified. These included the need to strengthen communication with residents who speak English as an additional language, have visual impairments, or live with dyslexia or other neurodiverse conditions.”
Choosing the Right Solution
The council researched what was available on the market, weighing up functionality, ease of use, and value for money. It was never just about features; the solution had to be something residents would actually want to use.
“While there were several options, Recite Me stood out when we cross-referenced functionality, ease of use, and value for money. The breadth of features, combined with an intuitive user experience, made Recite Me the best overall fit for our residents and our organisation.”
Real Impact, Every Day
The most used features have been text to speech, the screen mask, and font size adjustments. But the real impact shows up in the conversations Nicol’s colleagues are having with residents.
“Feedback from colleagues working directly with residents has been extremely positive. The translation tool has proved invaluable in overcoming communication barriers and supporting residents with everyday tasks such as finding out bin collection days, registering for school places, and accessing adult learning and skills courses.”
The reach has extended further than anticipated. The text to speech reader is now used in English language classes to support literacy, and the page summariser helps make complex information accessible to people with lower literacy levels.
“This has supported people with low literacy skills and has been strengthened further by the introduction of the page summariser, which helps simplify complex information.”
Looking Ahead
For Sunderland City Council, this is an ongoing commitment. The next step is to go beyond usage data and gather direct feedback from residents themselves.
“We recognise that our residents are the primary audience, and capturing their direct feedback is an important next step. We plan to explore this further through user engagement and research to better understand which features have the greatest impact on people’s day-to-day digital experiences.”
With 67,000 residents supported in a single year, Sunderland City Council has shown what becomes possible when you design services with everyone in mind.
If you’d like to explore how accessibility technology can support your website visitors, get in touch with the Recite Me team to find out more.
