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United Utilities hopes to better support customers with learning difficulties, visual impairments or who speak a foreign language to access information online.
The company said it wants to help customers find what they are looking for “with ease” and has introduced an Accessibility Help feature enabling users to customise its website.
Customers can select a different font, size or background colour or get the content read out loud. They can also get the site translated into one or more than 100 languages from Afrikaans to Zulu.
Louise Beardmore, customer and people director at United Utilities, said: “There are 11 million disabled people in the UK alone, two million people in the UK have significant sight loss and nearly three in 100 people have a learning disability. We want our customers to visit our website and be able to find what they’re looking for with ease.
“It’s really important to us that we can do our best to make our services and information as accessible as possible to everyone. We know, for example, that Polish is the top language when it comes to translating our online information for customers. ’Recite Me’ means all the text on the website can now be turned into Polish in a simple step.
“This new addition to our website is part of a wider plan to ensure more customers can easily get to the online help and information they need.”
A statement on the company’s website, says: “United Utilities is committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of disability, capability or technology.”
The Accessibility Help button on the homepage of United Utilities’ website has a range of tools, giving customers the option to:
- Change font sizes and colours
- Change background colour
- Translate the website into more than 100 languages – from Afrikaans to Zulu
- Have the text read aloud
- Access a reading ruler or a letterbox for focused viewing of a section on a page
- Just view in text mode
- Drag a magnifying glass across the site to view content in more detail
- Access a dictionary and thesaurus
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