Council website is more accessible than ever

Finding out about Council services has never been easier, thanks to a new tool.

North Ayrshire Council’s IT services have developed an accessibility tool on our public website that will enable everyone to access – and even customise - the information they need.

It means that those living with dyslexia, or have a visual impairment and those whose first language is not English, have the capability to ensure the site works for them.

The new accessibility tool launches officially today (Tuesday 5 August).

Councillor Christina Larsen, Cabinet Member for Finance and Procurement, said: “With more people than ever preferring to conduct payments and access information online, it’s important that we ensure everyone can enjoy the same level of service.

“When testing throughout our local communities, the feedback highlighted that this tool would be helpful in building the confidence of every part of our community with the move to digital and technological improvements in public services.

“Throughout development, we tested with just over 100 people from a variety of demographics and 58% experienced an accessibility need. We hope the accessibility tool provides tailored help for specific needs and provides digital support to North Ayrshire citizens when using our website.”

Among the features provided in the accessibility tool are:

• Dyslexia font As our website already uses a sans-serif font, which is industry standard for readability, we wanted to go a step further by offering an Open Dyslexic font, which provides additional help for some who struggle with common letter confusion while reading. The font character has a heavier weighted style, unique shape and more letterspacings. These features help users by reducing reading errors and improving speed by decreasing eye strain.
• Font size - The option to resize font supports both visually and cognitively impaired users by making text larger and more readable, a useful tool for everyone.
• High contrast mode - Using high contrast mode simplifies website colours, making text, links, and interactive elements clearer. This option helps any individual who experiences colour vision deficiency and improves reading experience and usability of the website. In addition, using high contrast colour is often the preference of people with low vision and those that are overwhelmed by bright web pages.
• Custom colours - Our custom colours default option increases visibility for some forms of dyslexia, using pastel backgrounds with dark blue text. These colours soften pages whilst keeping a high contrast ratio. The custom colour setting offers colour customisation choice allowing anyone to choose colours that work best for their individual needs.
• Translation - North Ayrshire has a diverse population, and our tool works with Google translate so it saves time and money reducing the need for paid translation.
• Read aloud function - It uses text to speech technology to convert written content into audio helping visually impaired users or anyone with a learning disability, and for anyone who simply prefers listening to information.

Your device’s browser will automatically remember the settings which are personalised when you close and open the website again.

For more information on how to access and use the accessibility tool, visit our website.

To help ensure people are aware of the accessibility features and how to use them, a series of workshops will be held in libraries across North Ayrshire in the coming weeks. Members of the public are welcome to attend any of the sessions.

Published: 05 August 2025