Over one billion people worldwide experience difficulties with reading and understanding content online. At the National Autistic Society, we are constantly looking at ways to make sure our website is as accessible as possible for everyone.

Hassell Inclusion recommendations

For our new website build in 2020, we commissioned Hassell Inclusion to carry out research with autistic people about their accessibility needs. Their recommendations report included 16 different key areas, including page layout, font size, colour schemes and so on. 

Vivid/Calm colour scheme

We also introduced a Vivid/Calm button at the top of every page on our website. This can be used to switch the default colour scheme (Vivid) to more muted shades and is a very popular feature with visitors.

Recite Me web accessibility toolbar

We are pleased to announce that on 24 August 2022, we will be adding a wide range of further support with the launch of the Recite Me accessibility toolbar.

There will be a new ‘Accessibility options’ link at the top of every webpage, which will launch the toolbar.

Key features of the toolbar include:

• a screen reader which reads out text content on webpages and in PDFs
• an interactive dictionary
• a tool which translates webpage and PDF text content into 120 different languages, 60 of which also have the screen reader feature
• an extensive colour palette which people can set to their own personal preferences
• a wide range of fonts, including the Open Dyslexic font
• a screen rule and screen mask to support with reading webpage content
• a clutter-free option which shows just the text on a webpage, without the usual visual elements
• a magnifying glass.

We hope this new support will help even more people to use our website and get the information they need.