Easy read and translate
How to adjust and translate our website!
- Updates
Accessibility tool - Recite Me - Easy read and translate
We want our website to be as accessible and user-friendly as possible. To help us with this, we have the Recite Me tool! This tool lets you translate, adapt and change our website to match your needs.
If you print or save a page while using the Recite Me tool, these changes will be made in the document. For example, if you have translated the page and changed the line spacing, your printed or saved document will be translated with the line spacing.
Turning on Recite Me
You can turn on Recite Me by clicking the ‘Easy read and translate’ button. You can find this button in the blue banner at the top of the page. The button will be in the right corner.
This will open a toolbar at the top of your screen with lots of symbols. If you hover your mouse over the tool symbols, you will see the name of the tool on screen and Recite Me will read the name of the tool out loud through your speakers.
Recite Me tools
Recite Me has a wide range of options that can help users to read information. You can pick and choose which tools you want to use. If you close the website or exit out of Recite Me, your settings will be saved for next time.
There are 5 categories of tools that ReciteMe offer:
Settings tools
You can edit the settings of the Recite Me toolbar. You can also undo all your changes and reset back to default settings
These include:
Settings – Change the Recite Me settings and the screen reader settings.
Reset toolbar – Reset all your changes back to default settings.
User guide – Read the user guide created by Recite Me. This links to a new page.
Screen reader tools
Recite has a screen reader tool. As soon as you open Recite Me, the screen reader will be turned on. If you hover over text, Recite Me will read the text out loud to you. The screen reader will also work if the translation tool is turned on. Please be aware this is limited to the 65 languages that are text-to-speak.
The screen reader tools include:
Back – Rewind to the previous paragraph of text
Play – Read the text aloud
Forward – Skip to the next paragraph of text
Download audio – Highlight a section of text and select download audio to download it as an audio file.
There are ways you can customise the screen reader to your preferences. In settings button, you can change:
- the voice to male or female
- the reading speed of the voice
- the screen reader controls appearing when your cursor over text
- if the screen reader reads automatically
- if the screen reader reads the whole page of content
Translation tool
Recite Me can translate the page into over 100 languages and 65 text to speech voices. To translate the page:
- Select the translate button (grey with Chinese symbol and A).
- Select your preferred language from the list.
This will translate the page. If your language has speaker symbol next to it, this means that when you can use the screen reader it will read it out loud to you in the language.
Text and style changing tools
Our website style may not meet your personal needs or preferences. Some people will need larger text, others would prefer to have a different coloured background or text. You can use Recite Me to change the font, spacing and background to meet your needs.
The text and style changing tools include:
Minus and plus symbols (+ -) - Decreasing and increasing the font size
Text options (Aa) – Change the font, the line height and the spaces between letters.
Focus Text (Ft) – Turn on focus reading which bolds the first half of every word. This can help guide the eyes through the text.
Colour theme – Change the website colouring to match your needs including monochrome and a range of preset light and dark backgrounds.
Cursor options – change the size and colour of the cursor.
Text mode – if you just want to read the text with no styling at all, you can use text mode.
Change margins (text only mode) – this will change the margins in Text Only mode.
The dark mode option in the colour theme tool however this is only change the theme for the Recite Me tool.
Reading aid tools
It can be hard to focus and read pages, Recite Me has a number of different tools that you may find helpful.
Ruler – Your cursor will be replaced with a reading ruler that you can move up and down the page.
Screen mask – This creates a letterbox hole, blacking out the text around it to help you focus. The size of the mask is fixed.
Dictionary – This tool will find uncommon words in the page and provide a definition for them. You can also highlight a word click the dictionary tool. It will look up a definition
Page summariser – This will tell you how long the average reading time of the page will be, any acronyms used on the page and will provide a summary of the page.
Magnifier – This will provide an interactive magnifying glass which can be dragged around the page. It will magnify the area in the magnifying glass x2.
Customise your experience with our website to suit your needs
Play around with the Recite Me tool! Explore the different tools and features. Find out your preferences and what makes reading easier for you.
If you don’t need to use these tools, that’s okay! We want to help our service users to be access the information they need in a way that is useful for them.
