Supporting people with learning disability or autism to live, learn and work.
Making a Difference in Digital Accessibility
Our website incorporates Recite Me – a web accessibility tool allowing you to customise our website in the way that works best for you.
Why web accessibility matters
Around 1 in 5 people in the UK has a disability and they can often face barriers like inaccessible websites. This prevents people from taking an active part in life, as well as accessing information about their health and wellbeing. Approximately 31,000 adults and around 11,000 children in Northern Ireland are believed to have a learning disability (Source: Mencap). While nearly 20,000 people in Northern Ireland are believed to have autism (Source: NAS)
Alongside disability and literacy-based barriers to accessing information, providing information to people whose first language is not English is an increasingly important part of our work. Incorporating Recite Me into our website means everyone accessing our website can benefit from the real-time translation feature, which can translate over 100 languages, including 35 text to speech voices.
Guide to using Recite Me
For more information on Recite Me, check out their website here. Here’s our quick guide to using Recite Me on our website:
Screen Reader
Our screen reader helps people who are visually impaired or neuro-divergent to better perceive and understand our website content.
Key features include:
- All content read aloud in a natural voice
- 35 different language options
- Speed controls and word-by-word highlighting for total customisation
- The Recite Me toolbar allows you to highlight any text and create an MP3 file, which downloads automatically to your computer. Audio is created in a natural-sounding conversational style.
The screen reader is easy to use, as shown in our example image.
Styling
Our website is customisable to a way that works for you. Recite Me supports people who are dyslexic, visually impaired or have a learning disability to change the way our website looks, so you can experience it the way it is intended.
Key features include:
- Text size and colour
- Website background colour
- Text font type, including Open-Dyslexic
- Text only option, where all styling is stripped away. This leaves text only for your viewing, much like a document
The styling function has lots of different options, as shown in our example image.
Reading
Reading content online can be a challenge for some people. To simplify and support you to read our content, Recite Me provides four tools.
Tools include:
- Ruler – to read line by line with no distractions of what is below
- Reading mask – to mask away 90% of our website, leaving only the information you want to concentrate on
- Magnifier – to zoom in to sections of the text making reading more clearly easier
- Margins – when in text only mode, you can use the margin feature to position content in the best place for you
The reading function makes small writing easy to read, as shown in our example image.
Translation
1 in 10 people don’t speak English as their first language in the UK
By using Recite Me, you can quickly and easily translate all our website content into over 100 languages, including 35 text to speech voices.
The translation function changes everything you see on our website, as shown in our example image.
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