Boston Borough Council launches new accessibility features to support more residents

Boston Borough 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 Boston Borough Council website, in the Accessibility tab. Alternatively, the toolbar page can be found through this link: www.boston.gov.uk/accessibility/toolbar

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: www.relayuk.bt.com/

Councillor Emma Cresswell, Portfolio Holder for Communities, said: “The introduction of our website’s new accessibility features is a strong step in the right direction.

“In particular, the options to quickly translate the website into many other common languages will be very useful for Boston Borough’s diverse community. With the accessibility features provided by ReciteMe and RelayUK, I am happy that our website and services will be easy to use for all residents.

“It’s important that our website is inclusive to all residents who use it.”

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