As part of Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2025 (Thursday 15 May), today we celebrate the importance of accessibility and inclusion, because everyone deserves equal access to the digital world.
Not everyone experiences the web in the same way, which is why we provide the ReciteMe Assistive Toolbar on the Council website. These tools empower every visitor to customise their online experience to suit their individual needs.
The most popular feature of the ReciteMe toolbar on our website is the screen reader, which translates on-screen content into audible speech or Braille for individuals with visual impairments, as a result, making our digital content more accessible. While it is mainly used in English, it offers translations into 100 languages and provides text to speech in 65 languages.
However, it is not just for residents with additional needs, as it provides customisation and reading aids that anyone can benefit from. You change nearly every aspect of the Council website and tailor it your personal needs and preferences, including our colour scheme as well as text size, font style, size, colour, and spacing. You can also choose to use a range of tools to focus on text, eliminate distractions & look up words.
Over the past year, the usage of the ReciteMe toolbar has gone up by 46% (2023-24 v 2024-25), and we have seen the number of unique visitors rise by 22% over the same period.
As a Council, we have signed up to be part of the ReciteMe analytics pilot programme, which will include deeper reporting, such as viewing what pages residents are on when they activate the toolbar.
Cllr Bob Sleigh, Solihull’s Cabinet Member for Resources said:
“As a Council we are committed to making our content accessible and inclusive. We are very proud to offer the ReciteMe assistive toolbar to our website users, which allows them to select the tools they require to make their user experience the best possible. We are very pleased that more users are using the tools each year and we look forward to seeing the outcome of the enhanced analytics in due course.”