Listen to web pages

Accessibility is important to us, and this has also been taken into account in the updated city strategy. We want everyone to be able to understand the information produced by the city as easily as possible. That is why we have added the ReadSpeaker listening feature to our pages, which works with artificial intelligence.

You will always find the listening button at the top left of the page, just below the orange menu or the main image on the page. You can listen to the page from the beginning with a single click. If you wish, you can also listen to only a specific section of text: first, highlight the desired section with your mouse, and then a listening menu will open on the page, from which you can start listening.

Limitations encountered during listening

The site has some elements, such as accordion menus, that function as separate entities. The listening function may stop at these points. You can get the listening function working again by opening the accordion menu in question and highlighting its first word. You can then start listening as normal.

Image captions

As a rule, the images on the website have alternative text, or alt text. Alternative text is used to convey the information contained in the image to people who, for some reason, cannot see the image and use a screen reader, for example. The alternative text may be empty, or the image may be marked as decorative, in which case the screen reader behaves as if the image does not exist and does not inform the user that there is an image on the page.

The guidelines for alternative image text are based on WCAG requirements. The WCAG guidelines do not require that alternative text begin with the word “image,” but we have found that adding it makes it easier to follow the page using the ReadSpeaker listening function. This makes listening clearer, especially when there is a lot of different content on the page.

Feedback

If you would like to give feedback on the listening function or other development ideas for the city’s website, you can use the feedback form. Select “websites” from the form and leave your message. We are constantly developing our pages to make them as easy to read and accessible as possible.

Further information:

Heidi Cavén, Marketing and Communications Designer
heidi.caven@loimaa.fi, tel. +358 40 191 8292