Middlesex Cricket is today delighted to announce that the club has extended its relationship with specialist award-winning accessibility software partner, Recite Me, to provide continued and improved accessibility across its website and communications channels.
In 2019, Middlesex Cricket became the first professional cricket club to use the innovative software across its website, which has since benefitted tens of thousands of viewers.
The software greatly enhances the viewing experience of users, allowing them to customise the website to their own individual needs, giving them an improved viewing experience regardless of their disability, age, or language.
The Recite Me toolbar, which is easily accessible at the click of a button, offers users a comprehensive suite of tools to make their journey through the club’s website a far more enjoyable and fulfilling experience. There are a range of accessibility modifications, including text-to-speech functionality, font enlargement, alternative fonts, an interactive dictionary, a range of pre-selected contrasting colour schemes, audio playback, translation tools featuring over 100 languages from around the world and many other dedicated accessibility functions.
An estimated 285 million people globally experience some form of visual impairment and almost 15 percent of the world’s population are diagnosed with dyslexia! In the UK alone, there are 1.5 million people with a learning disability and 4.2 million people use English as a second language – all facts that underpin the important role that Recite Me is playing in improving accessibility on Middlesex’s website.
In the last twelve months alone, over 106,000 pages have been viewed on the Middlesex website using the Recite Me Software, proving that it is an essential requirement for Middlesex’s growing army of followers.
The Club has plans to incorporate the Recite Me Software’s translation facility when building further engagement with the many diverse communities that the county of Middlesex comprises and will be launching multi-language functionality across its website at the click of a button to make access easier for non-English speaking followers.
Ankit Shah, Co-Chair of Middlesex Cricket’s Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee, commented:
“With evidence showing that our followers are using the Recite Me Software on our website in their thousands, it has proven to be a really important communication tool for the Club, and we are delighted to extend our relationship with Recite Me for a further three years.
“There is a huge amount of work going on at Middlesex to further engage with the different communities that populate our county and providing communication materials and a website that is in the same language is absolutely critical.
“We see this as a small, but significant, step in our ambition to make Middlesex Cricket a wholly inclusive environment for everyone and being able to communicate with our followers in their chosen language, whilst providing many other accessibility benefits if so important in helping us get there. Viewers will be able to access our content in a number of different languages such as Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and many more.”
For more information about Recite Me, please visit their website HERE.
HOW TO USE RECITE ME
Website viewers wishing to access the Recite Me toolbar will see a yellow 'ACCESSIBILITY TOOLS' button at the bottom right of all pages on the club's website, on both desktop and mobile versions. Simply click this button and the toolbar will automatically launch and all facilities within Recite Me will be available for use.
Plans to incorporate multi-language versions of the Middlesex website will be announced in the near future.
