During March, we are celebrating our very own Disability Awareness month, raising awareness of disabilities and long-term health conditions, and promoting accessibility services.
As a housing association with a social purpose, we are taking proactive steps to be a positive example of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) best practice within our communities and the wider built environment sector.
We are committed to being fair and inclusive, supporting diversity, and providing inclusion for all our customers and colleagues.
As part of our EDI strategy, we embrace and celebrate each other's differences, making our services accessible to everyone, so our customers and colleagues feel they are valued, and their voices are heard.
We are providing more support to our customers and colleagues through our colleague network groups, and are diversifying our workforce, as part of our commitment to creating an inclusive environment.
As well as this, we are continuously improving our website to make it more accessible for anyone who visits it.
Globally, one in seven people live with a disability. For some people, this can make accessing information difficult. For example, people with visual impairments might struggle if information is only available in text format; or people with cognitive disabilities might find it difficult to read information on a crowded web page.
To make sure all visitors to our website can access the information we are sharing, we have added an assistive toolbar.
Through the toolbar, you can choose to have our content read out loud, remove distracting content, or add a screen tint with a reading pane to help you focus. You can also translate our web pages into over 100 languages.
How to use the toolbar
To open the toolbar:
1. Scroll to the bottom of any LiveWest webpage and click on the orange ‘Speak’ button in the bottom right of every page. The toolbar will appear along the top of the website.
2. Or, click the ‘Accessibility’ button in the top right of any LiveWest webpage. Then, select ‘Speak and translate’. The toolbar will appear along the top of the website.
To use the features in the toolbar:
- To hear text read out loud, click on the first icon and hover your mouse over any text. From a touchscreen device you will need to click on the text to hear it.
- To translate the page, click the fourth icon in the toolbar.
- To get picture definitions for content on the page, make a selection on the page, then click the fifth icon in the toolbar (the icon that looks like an image).
- To generate and download an MP3 file of the page, make a selection in the text, then click the sixth icon in the toolbar (the icon that says 'MP3').
- To apply a screen tint and mask, click on the seventh icon in the toolbar (the eye icon).
- To enlarge text as it is read out loud, click the eighth icon in the toolbar (the magnifying glass icon).
- To simplify the page, click the ninth icon in the toolbar (the icon with the downwards pointing arrow).
- To explore more, click on the question mark icon to discover what each feature on the toolbar does.
To find out more about the toolbar, watch the video below.
Find out more about our accessibility services in this article.