Member News: The Children's Family Trust - Developments in Digital Accessibility

At The Children’s Family Trust (CFT), we value all of our audience, customers and service users, and strive to ensure that everyone accessing our website has the most positive user experience possible.

We have recently added a new accessibility tool, Recite Me, which allows users to customise our website and view it in a way that works best for you.

Here’s why web accessibility and inclusivity matters to us:

People are our priority

• At The CFT we are all about people. Around 8% of children in the UK have a disability, in addition to the 19% of adults of working age, and around 44% of adults over state pension age. Sometimes those who have a disability can often struggle on inaccessible websites and this can prevent them in accessing important information.
• In addition to this, approximately 10% of people in the UK have dyslexia, while 1 in 6 people in England experience challenges accessing information due to poor literacy skills.

With our new software, we can make a difference by ensuring our children can access the information they need coming in to care in a format that is accessible to them, as well as providing our staff and foster carers with the tools to read information in a way that best suits them.

We embrace all walks of life and backgrounds

Alongside disability and literacy-based barriers to accessing information, providing information to people whose first language is not English is an important part of reaching individuals in the UK who want to provide stable and loving homes to children in care. With 1 in 10 people not speaking English as their first language, it is important that we reach these communities by allowing them to access information in a way that is comfortable and clear for them. In addition to this, in recent years we have seen a rise in the number of children coming into care who do not speak English as their first language, and as an organisation we recognise that this time is already a very difficult experience for a child or young person to go through, without having to worry about the added pressure of language barriers. With this new software, users can benefit from the real-time translation feature, which can translate our information into over 100 languages, including 35 text to speech voices.
Our Marketing and Media Manager, Jessica, commented “We are excited to be launching the Recite Me Toolbar on our website in the hope that it will make the experience for all of our users more comfortable.”

“As an organisation, we support both foster carers and children from all walks of life and backgrounds, and it is important for us to ensure that our stakeholders are receiving information in a way that suits them best. We are hopeful that adding the Recite Me toolbar will make our website function in a more accessible and inclusive way for all and allow us to reach more people.”

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 perceive and understand the information on our website.

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.

You can see the reader being used in this image.

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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 removed leaving only text for viewing.

The styling function has lots of different options, as shown in our example image.

Reading Support

Reading content online can be a challenge for some people. To simplify and support you to read our content, Recite Me provides additional reading 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 to read more clearly.
• Margins – when in text only mode, you can use the margin feature to position content in the best place for you.
• Dictionary – Website visitors have access to a fully integrated dictionary and thesaurus.

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.

If you have any additional questions about using Recite me on our website, you can contact us on 01527 574446 or email us.

Source:
https://thecft.org.uk