Approximately one billion people globally have a disability and they can often face barriers when visiting inaccessible websites that prevent them from taking an active part in life. The Recite Me assistive toolbar helps people with a wide range of disabilities to access websites and their content hassle-free.
Recite Me’s toolbar offers a wide range of personalisation to help people with different disabilities in different ways, here is a breakdown of how it can help people with a range of disabilities.
Dyslexia
Recite Me helps people with dyslexia and sensory issues to read and understand website content by letting them change the look and feel of a site to suit their personal needs. A user can fully customise the background and text colour as well as the font type, sizing, spacing, and line-height. This includes the specialist Open Dyslexic font, which is designed to give letters extra weight at the bottom, so words don’t jump around the screen.
To support reading, dyslexic users can choose to have text read aloud via the fully customisable screen reader. To check word definitions the page the toolbar has a built-in dictionary and thesaurus.
Access auditor Keith Ferguson worked with Recite Me’s client St Johnstone FC to help the club improve its accessibility. Commenting on assistive technology being added to the Scottish Premiership football club’s website, he said:
“Having this software installed is another example of the club’s commitment to continual improvements and they should be applauded for being the first in the UK. My son is dyslexic and a keen football fan so I encouraged Sean to take a look at the application. His feedback was very positive, advising ‘It is a very clever system. The ‘text to speech’ function is excellent. I really liked the ability to change the font to whatever was easiest for me to read and being able to change the background colour made a huge difference visually, plus I had the assistance of the ruler which was an added tool I wasn’t expecting.”
Visual Impairments
People with visual impairments need to have the ability to customise a website in order to view content in a way that works best for them. To aid viewing website content visitors can use Recite Me assistive toolbar styling features to customise a website’s background colour and the text (inclusive font style, size and colour). People can also use the text-only and margin features to reposition text on a screen with no styling distraction. Users can also opt to have the text read aloud.
Martin Lea, Recite Me Sales Executive, has a visual impairment. He said:
“I became visually impaired in my mid-forties having acquired a condition that permanently damaged the macular in my right. The range of styling features on the Recite Me assistive toolbar massively support my content reading. Mostly the font size increase button and the colour, contrast, and font options.
“All websites have their own styles but there seems to be a trend of using dark grey text on a light grey background which can be frustrating. Recite allows me to apply ‘MY’ preferred colours and font, to facilitate reading content. Reading paragraphs with essentially just my left eye means it’s easy to lose my place in a long paragraph. The ruler keeps me in the right place on-page.”
Autism
Children and adults with autism can face distinct challenges when reading, that’s why assistive technology for people with autism is so important. Recite Me can support website visitors with a totally customisable screen reader, that allows text to be read out aloud at different speeds, and in different languages, with either a male or female voice. Recite Me provides a totally customisable solution to select any text and background colour combination to support individuals who need specific colours and fonts to aid their reading.
ADHD
To support people with ADHD and reading content online the Recite Me toolbar offers a screen mask or a ruler allowing them to focus and stop being distracted by other content on the page. Not one case of ADHD is the same, so other users find the fully customisable styling features very useful to help their sensory issues.
Dyspraxia
To support dyspraxia the Recite Me toolbar offers a totally customisable screen reader. Website visitors can have content read aloud in over 35 different languages and they can control the speed at which the text is readout. To support reading a user can customise the text font, colour, sizing, and spacing.
Daniel Cobb specialises in Disability Inclusion and he has dyspraxia. He said of Recite Me being added to our recruitment client Rullion’s website:
“This is very powerful for someone like me. I am dyspraxic and have sensory processing difficulties. The process of job hunting is mentally very draining for most job hunters but being dyspraxic makes it significantly worse.
“To be able to use the accessibility tools on the website ensures I can process the information with greater efficiency and therefore reduce the visual fatigue I experience from using websites. Also knowing that Rullion as a recruiter is disability confident increases my confidence, they will understand my requirements and means I am likely to disclose with confidence. It is so important for all recruiters to be inclusive and be disability confident like Rullion as it means a large pool of relatively untapped potential can be accessed.”
Epilepsy
For extreme epilepsy Recite Me can support people online by using the “text only” feature to strip away any media or graphics that may cause a seizure. A user can also change the style of a website page if different colours affect their epilepsy.
Hyperlexia
Recite Me provides a fully integrated dictionary and thesaurus. People with hyperlexia will be able to read words but they may not understand their meanings. Having a built-in dictionary allows people to understand wording without leaving the website.
Colour blindness
Colour blindness (colour vision deficiency, or CVD) affects approximately one in twelve men (8%) and 1 in 200 women globally. In order to avoid any colour clashes (e.g red and green) Recite Me provides a totally customisable solution to select any background and text colour combination to support individuals who need specific colours and fonts to aid their reading.
Martin Robertson, Sales Manager Recite Me, has colour blindness. He said:
“As one of the #1in12 men with CVD (Colour Vision Deficiency), more commonly known as colour blindness, one of my biggest frustrations is colour contrast ratios on websites not being sufficiently high to enable me to read the content. It’s most prevalent in footers where the brand colour is black, blue or grey and then the links are red.”
Mobility and Physical Impairments
Recite Me can help people with a range of physical impairments that affect mobility such as multiple sclerosis (MS), which also affects people’s vision, and motor neurone disease (MND). Recite Me allows people with these conditions to access large passages of text on web pages with minimum effort (and scrolling on pages) by opting for Recite Me to read the text aloud.
100’s of organisations already use Recite Me to make their websites more accessible and inclusive…call 0191 4328092 to find out more or book your free trial now or check out our accessibility scanner and fixer.
