The digital world is an integral part of today’s society, with approximately 67.1% of the global population actively using the internet. Yet, for the 1.3 billion people worldwide with a disability (WHO), it isn’t as easy to access the internet with just a few swipes.
Organisations across the globe are now prioritising inclusion to help open up the digital world to all so everyone can independently access information and services that directly impact them.
For public sector organisations, being accessible online, is simply not just a ‘nice to have’ but is a requirement. The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Devices) Accessibility Regulations, state that public sector bodies must comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2.
Liverpool City Region’s Economy for Healthier Lives (EHL) programme and organisations based in the City Region’s Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise (VCFSE) sector, have come together to improve access to online content for people with certain health conditions. To do this, 30 organisations across the City Region’s VCFSE were invited to take on Recite Me’s assistive tools.
John White who leads the City Region’s EHL programme told us, “A key aim of the EHL programme is to improve access to employment opportunities for people with a health condition. One such condition is dyslexia and feedback from people with this condition clearly shows their frustration with websites, citing the style and colour of the font, the size of text, the colour of the background and the layout of the webpages.
“This experience often put people off using the internet causing them to miss out on information which might have been of interest to them e.g. a job vacancy. This is despite the websites complying with the ‘letter of the law’ and the sad thing is, the addition of an assistive toolbar to the website can vastly improve the person’s experience.”
Merseyside Youth Association, Make It Happen, Deaf Resource Centre and the Hope Centre are just a few of the 30 organisations that have taken on the Recite Me toolbar. The tools available for website visitors include screen reading functionality, multiple reading aids and an on-demand translation tool that has over 100 languages, 65 of which are text-to-speech.
A spokesperson from the Hope Centre told us, “Our mental health participants who are diagnosed with ADHD, like that they can reduce the visible area of the screen so that they are not distracted by other elements on the page. The translation tool is also great for our Hope House homeless project which is increasingly working with newly status refugees and can more easily explain the support we offer.”
Merseyside Youth Association also commented on the adoption of Recite Me, stating, “We know from discussions with young people and parents/carers that stigma can be a barrier to accessing help. But the Recite Me tool supports users to overcome this as adaptations can be made quickly and discreetly to support users’ needs, without external support and/or equipment.”
With a range of tools available, the Recite Me toolbar can help you to support a combination of needs and a range of individual or co-occurring conditions such as dyslexia, hearing and visual impairments, dyspraxia, ADHD, autism spectrum conditions and much more.
A spokesperson from the Deaf Resource Centre said, “Whenever I show people the Recite Me toolbar they always seem impressed by its functionality, and options. I’ve recently spoken to an IT digital officer for the NHS and showed them how it works, and they were very taken by its abilities.”
John continued, “The ability to change colours, line spacing, font and text size has been particularly useful for users with dyslexia. The text-to-speech function has also been beneficial for users who are blind or partially sighted.”
Recite Me now supports over 5,000 websites in providing inclusive online journeys. Our assistive toolbar was launched over 6.2 million times in 2023, and over 42 million web pages have been viewed using our assistive technology.
For more information on the Recite Me toolbar, contact our team or book a live demonstration. You can also find out more about our latest product the Recite Me Checker, which is helping organisations to create a website with accessibility in mind and to WCAG industry standards.
Online Accessibility and Inclusion Toolkit
This year we published our Digital Inclusion Toolkit that was developed to help businesses make a real difference to the lives of the millions of people around the world who encounter online barriers. The 40 page document provides practical advice covering the complete landscape of online accessibility from how to write an accessibility statement to our top tips for providing an inclusive recruitment journey.
