Recite Me

There are millions of people in the world who cannot gain the full benefit of digital content because of a health condition, impairment or disability.

Ross Linnett, owner and founder of Recite Me was diagnosed with Dyslexia late in life, so he knows first hand how difficult that can make the things so many of us take for granted. He’d experienced struggles with existing digital solutions and wanted to build a SaaS accessibility product that would make life easier for people in the same boat.

Ross wanted a solution that made websites easily accessible for those with a visual impairment, dyslexia or learning disabilities, and for anyone whose first language may not be English.

It was crucial that would be available online, so that it would be able to be used by anyone at any time, regardless of where in the world they may be. He wanted to solve the common issues faced by dyslexic users and those with other visual impairments, such as colour blindness and dyspraxia, while also eliminating the problems with existing similar software - limitations such as not being portable, requiring multiple licenses and only being available for use on the machine it has been installed it on. Ross was also keen to ensure it would be simple to implement, as a complicated system would create further issues for users.

Once we’d identified that the best solution would be delivered as an online SaaS piece of software, we began the initial platform build in 2010. A complex yet lightweight javascript library was developed to serve an easy to use and feature-rich user interface, while simple javascript was used to implement these features. The product works across all devices, ensuring that no matter the hurdles, more visitors will be able to comfortably browse your website and you’re therefore able to reach a wider customer base.

We developed the new product on a custom web stack, which focused on high throughput and low latency in order to serve a high volume of traffic. We developed custom solutions for delivering text as audio, as well as a custom parsing engine which ‘understands’ the web page and applies accessibility tools to suit. We also built using the idea of a modular framework to allow extensibility of the Recite Me core and to help ‘future-proof’ the product.

We’re pleased as punch to say that Recite Me has gained both local and global recognition. It was accepted onto the North East business growth initiative, The Difference Engine, and the Managing Director of Recite Me was asked to accompany Britain’s Chancellor and Prime Minister on a trade trip to China to promote the software in Asia. With continued work and the addition of new features, new business revenue has grown rapidly over the last 3 years, going from £65,000 in 2017 to £415,000 in 2018.

In 2019 Recite Me won ‘Technology Company of The Year’ at the National Centre for Diversity and has seen large customer adoption from exciting companies and organisations, including Gatwick Airport, KPMG, Tesco Bank, Dunelm and Liverpool University among others. We’ve loved working on such an important project and hope Recite Me continues to make an impact for users around the world.

We've recently made significant updates to the platform, including:

1. Word by word highlighting, offering an intuitive tool for those seeking assistance with solitary words.
2. Increased options for translations including dual-gender dictation for Danish, Dutch, English (Australian), English (GB), English (USA), French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
3. Dynamic control for reading speed.
4. A bold new look for the toolbar compiled from common design languages.