ReachDeck Toolbar

Need help reading our website?

We’re proud to have a tool which has speech, reading and translation support on our website with ReachDeck.

This innovative tool helps those who struggle to access and understand information online. In the UK, more than 12 million people have print disabilities such as dyslexia, low literacy, and mild visual impairment and more than eight million people speak English as a second language.

ReachDeck works by reading our website content out loud in a natural-sounding voice. It can translate our web pages into 99 languages and read the content aloud in 40 of the most commonly spoken languages around the world. ReachDeck can even translate and read pdf documents, such as patient leaflets which are opened from our website in your browser.

Try out the ReachDeck Toolbar

To launch the ReachDeck Toolbar:

1. Click on the yellow universal access button in the bottom-right corner on all our webpages
2. The ReachDeck toolbar will dock at the top of your screen
3. Click on the first ‘pointed finger’ icon on the toolbar
4. Hover your mouse pointer over any text on our site to hear it read out loud

For a description of what each option on the ReachDeck toolbar does, click on the "question mark" icon on the toolbar:

How does the ReachDeck Toolbar help?

The ReachDeck Toolbar will help you to read and translate the content on our website.

The toolbar features include:

• Text-to-speech: click on or select any text to hear it read aloud 
• Translation: translate content into over 100 languages 
• Text magnification: enlarge text and hear it read out loud 
• MP3 generation: convert selected text into an MP3 audio file 
• Screen mask: reduce glare with a tinted mask 
• Webpage simplifier: remove clutter from the screen and display only the main text
• Picture dictionary: displays pictures related to text selected on the page