As part of our continuous website improvements we are pleased to announce that our website is now speech-enabled with free-to-download software. This will allow visitors to our site to listen to the website being read to them. This latest improvement will help those with reading difficulties, literacy problems, dyslexia, mild vision difficulties and where English is not their first language - thereby improving accessibility of information to a greater percentage of the population.

Our website can be speech enabled by you on demand using the free 'Browsealoud' program, which is available for Windows PCs using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape and Mozilla browsers. Your PC will also need speakers and a sound card to allow you to take advantage of this technology.

Click on the Browsealoud image below to reach the download site, then follow the instructions to download and install the program. Download and installation of Browsealoud will take around 10-15 minutes on a standard modem. When Browsealoud is installed you will see a 'blue concentric circles icon' in the system tray at the bottom right hand corner of your screen to tell you that Browsealoud is loaded and ready.

Once the program is installed, words will be instantly turned into speech when you roll your mouse over text within our website. Browsealoud also reads text in Adobe .PDF files attached to our website if you have either Adobe Reader version 6 or 7 (or higher) or Adobe Acrobat (full version) version 6 or 7 (or higher) installed on your PC.

Once you have downloaded the software, you can configure settings to your preferences. To download British voices, open the Browsealoud application then click on the 'updates' tab. Choose the option to 'get voices, updates and help'. You can then download two British voices, one male and one female. More information, and details of how to customise and fine tune the software to your individual requirements, can be found on the Browsealoud website.

 www.browsealoud.com/