Merthyr Tydfil takes 1st place in UK Councils most accessible website

Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council proudly wears the gold ribbon for yet another month in the Silktide Accessibility Index, and being recognised as the most accessible Council website in the UK.

Silktide is a platform for understanding and improving large websites, which evaluates web accessibility and assigns a score based on their level of compliance with the globally-recognized Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG); an international standard that explains how to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities.

The Recite Me toolbar has been a positive and welcome addition to the Council’s website, making it digitally inclusive by allowing visitors to customise the content so they can access and consume it in ways that work best for them. This has successfully increased engagement by supporting people who have additional needs, and those who require languages other than English or Welsh.

Councillor Gareth Richards, Equalities & Diversity Champion said;
“The Council staff led Accessibility Group works together to ensure the council is continuously improving accessibility of its online services, always striving to lead in digital inclusion and ensuring that content is easy to read and meets the needs of our communities.”

The Recite Me Toolbar is broken down into four main areas, screen reader, translation, styling and reading. All functions support a wide range of disabilities to aid website usability and reflect the needs of our communities. Since its launch on our Website in September 2022, the most popular feature clicks are currently the screen reader and translation tools. Languages for the screen reader feature currently include, English, Welsh, Polish, Turkish and Russian.

*For the most accurate Welsh translation please visit our Cymraeg Website.

A Merthyr Tydfil resident and regular visitor to the website said;
“The read aloud function is really useful for helping me hear what is written on the website page. The ruler function also supports me to breakdown what I want to read which makes things clearer for me.” 

You can view the Silktide Index results here:
UK Councils - Silktide Index

You can learn more about ReciteMe here;
Recite Me | Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council