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South Tyneside Homes Provides Residents Accessibility Support Online

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South Tyneside Homes has enhanced its ability to deliver excellent services across the borough to its residents by providing an accessible experience online.

18,000 council homes across South Tyneside are managed and maintained by the housing company.

To fulfill its commitment to residents, the organisation wanted to ensure a high quality of communications. By using Recite Me assistive technology, residents who are visually impaired, neurodiverse, or those who speak English as a second language can access essential housing information barrier-free.

The assistive toolbar on the South Tyneside Homes website offers a wide range of customisable options, such as translating content into different languages, read aloud, and styling assistance. This includes adjustments to colour, font type, and size.

Cllr Ed Malcolm, Chair of South Tyneside Homes’ Board, said: “It is more vital than ever that our website is as accessible and as inclusive as possible. The pandemic has highlighted just how important it is that people can access services and engage remotely, quickly and easily.

“We know more and more of our residents are going online to use a range of services and Recite Me is one of the tools we are using to make our website user friendly for everyone.”

 

Over the last 12 months, 500 people have used the Recite Me toolbar to read and understand essential housing information on the South Tyneside Homes website.

Toolbar data shows that website visitors have viewed over 1,760 accessible pages. This gives South Tyneside Homes an insight into what pages people are looking at and what support they need to view them barrier-free.

On average each unique user has accessed 3.4 pages per session, which is fantastic to see as the depth of journey is higher than the internet average of 2.8.

The most used accessibility toolbar feature is the screen reader, this reads text aloud for the user. This is followed by the styling options where users have increased the text size by 110% and 130%. The most commonly translated languages have been Albanian, Arabic, and Spanish.

South Tyneside Homes web users can customise their experience by clicking the “Accessibility Tools” button at the top of their website.

But, if you’re a business looking to become more accessible, just like South Tyneside Homes, then try out our WCAG checker.

 
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