South Holland District Council offers accessibility features to support more residents

South Holland District Council is pleased to have an accessibility toolbar feature on its website, making the webpages more inclusive and user-friendly.

The ReciteMe toolbar, once activated by the press of a button, offers a range of functions to support people to access the Council's content barrier-free.

The assistant tool helps make the pages more user-friendly for those who have a disability, learning difficulty, visual impairment or those where English is not their first language.

Some of the many accessibility options available include:

• Changing the size and font of text
• A screen reader to read text out loud
• Enabling Focus Text, for ease of reading
• Translation into more than 100 languages other than English
• Changing the colour scheme
• Cursor options, a magnifier and more

The toolbar can be found from the home page on the South Holland District Council website, in the Accessibility tab. Alternatively, the toolbar page can be found here.

The Council offers other accessibility measures too, such as Relay UK, a service provided by BT. This system supports the deaf and hard of hearing by making phone calls with the Council much easier.

The Relay UK app can be downloaded and used to make calls. The caller can type or talk to a specially trained Relay Assistant, who relays the message to us. We can then listen and respond, and the Relay Assistant will type the response for the customer, to be read in real-time.

This service is available to all phone users and more information on it can be found online at this page.

Councillor Jim Astill, Portfolio Holder for Corporate, Governance and Communications, said "The accessibility toolbar is an essential feature for the South Holland District Council website, as it improves the inclusivity of our online pages.

"This is in addition to the Relay UK app, which offers a more accessible method of calling the council for those who may struggle with their hearing.

"It's essential that anyone who needs the council's services can easily communicate with us and get the most from our website. With extra features such as a screen reader to narrate the text out loud, the ReciteMe toolbar is a great addition to our website."

Please not that this accessibility toolbar is available for most of the webpages on South Holland District Council's website, however, some pages, such as the Planning Portal, do not currently support this feature.