Tech Tip: Making your Blog/Website more Accessible

How accessible is your blog/website? Is the color/size/font of your text readable to everyone?
Can someone click a button and have the text read to them?

Sure, those with difficulties often have apps of their own to do this for any website, but maybe they’re away from their computer and at a library computer that doesn’t have them.

ATBar (Assistive Technologies) provides a free app, easy to install, that creates a toolbar increasing the accessibility of your blog or website. Download and install instructions can be found on the AtBar website.

You can insert the code anywhere on your blog/website. I have placed it in my left-column. Once you click the ATbar button, a toolbar similar to the one pictured below should appear on your screen.

“ATbar has been created as an open-source, cross-browser toolbar to help users customise the way they view and interact with web pages. The concept behind ATbar is simple: One toolbar to provide all of the functionality you would usually achieve through the use of different settings or products.” 

“It is designed for those who may not have their assistive technologies to hand and need a quick way of accessing text on the screen with magnification and/or text to speech etc. It can help those with low vision, dyslexia and other reading difficulties, as well as those who may wish to just reduce the glare of black text on bright white backgrounds. It is not designed for regular screen reader users who need their assistive technology to access the computer as well as their browser.”

Added functions include:
1) Increase
2) Decrease font size
3) Change font typeface/line spacing
4) Spellcheck
5) Dictionary
6) Text to Speech
7) Word Prediction
8) Change text, link, and background colors
9) Create an overlay color for the site