2011 CITY OF UNLEY ADDS TEXT-to-SPEECH TO WEBSITE WITH BrowseAloud
Wednesday 3 August 2011

To ensure that the Council website is as accessible to as many people as possible the City of Unley has added text to speech functionality to it’s website using BrowseAloud.

BrowseAloud reads website content aloud and highlights each word as it is spoken. It specifically assists groups who have difficulty reading online content, in particular people affected with dyslexia, literacy skill issues and specific learning difficulties or where English is a second language.

City of Unley CEO Ray Pincombe said “BrowseAloud adds value to the City of Unley’s website in recognising the needs of a diverse community. The service will benefit residents and local businesses that access information from the council’s website as well as visitors to the City. BrowseAloud will help us in ensuring our website is accessible to a greater number of internet users.”

One of the core features that BrowseAloud deploys is ‘dual-colour highlighting’. Each sentence is highlighted in one colour, while each word is highlighted in a contrasting colour, as it is spoken. This has been found to improve reading comprehension.

Additional features include text magnification, a spoken dictionary, screen tinting and an MP3 Maker.

Visitors to council’s website simply click on the BrowseAloud icon on the homepage and follow the simple steps to download BrowseAloud, free of charge.

Media Release