Global Accessibility Day 2022

Preston City Council Supports Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2022

Preston City Council is proud to celebrate the 11th Global Accessibility Awareness Day by joining together with Recite Me to raise awareness of the importance of digital inclusion. 

Today (Thursday 19 May) marks Global Accessibility Awareness Day, a key date in our calendar to get everyone talking, thinking, and learning about digital access and inclusion.

Why is digital access and inclusion important?

Over one billion people worldwide have a disability, of this number, it's estimated that 1 in 5 people do not have access to the assistive technology they need. 

To cast aside an inaccessible digital world, we have created an inclusive website to enable all staff, customers, and website visitors to customise their digital experience, to suit their own specific needs. 

Every online user deserves a first-rate digital experience. Someone with access needs due to disabilities/impairments must be able to experience web-based services, content, and other digital products with the same successful outcome as those without disabilities.

When you visit our website, you can use a variety of support tools to read and understand content in a way that works for you, features include:

• text-to-speech functionality
• fully customisable styling features
• multiple reading aids,
• translation tool with over 100 languages including 35 text-to-speech. 

Ian Heslop the Web Manager and ICT Development Officer said:   

Together we can build an inclusive online world. This can start today on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, let's understand the barriers presented online and how we can adapt and overcome them. 

Our online website tools

We want to make our website as accessible as possible to all visitors and do this using several tools.

A screen reader service

This is for users who require or prefer to listen to the text rather than read.

To access this tool, select the blue button at the top of the page marked Accessibility. Here you will be presented with the Recite Me tool bar which allows you to have content read out load, translate web pages or listen in an alternative language, amongst other features.

Making text as simple as possible to understand.

We aim to meet Plain English Campaign standards. We aim to meet Lower secondary education reading levels. This refers to a reading age of 7 to 9 years old. 

A free translation service

Our website is an English language website but we provide translation tools to help you to read our web pages in over 100 different languages. 

To access this tool, select the blue button at the top of the page marked Accessibility. Here you will be presented with the Recite Me tool bar which allows you to choose the language you would prefer.

Our council information is also available in alternative formats such as Braille and Easy read.

SignLive - Support for the deaf

We recognise and value all our customers, including those who use British Sign Language (BSL) and/or Speech to Text Translation (STTR).

We are part of the Community Directory where you can contact us via a British Sign Language interpreter using SignLive.

Visit our SignLive Information page

Accessibility Statement

We want everyone who visits the website to be able to find, read and understand our content, for more information please view our accessibility statement.