Why accessibility is so important in recruitment, we sat down with Ross, MD at ReciteMe, to discuss
Why the Morson accessibility journey is so important for job seekers
At the start of the year, we began our accessibility journey by adding the Recite Me accessibility software to our website to ensure our online recruitment process is accessible to everyone.
To find out more about why accessibility in recruitment is so important and learn more about the story behind Recite Me, we spoke to Ross, Managing Director of the innovative company…
“Recite Me is an online accessibility tool that makes websites instantly accessible for users with dyslexia, visual impairments, English as their second language and a whole host of other conditions.”
Since we implemented Recite Me onto our website in February, we have had nearly 3,000 people use the software to browse our website and find a job, opening up our services to a much wider talent pool who may not have been able to use our website before.
So far, the most used Recite Me feature on Morson.com is the text to speech feature. This enables people with visual impairments or language barriers access the content on our website as the computer reads out the text for them.
Ross added:
“I think the most used feature is text to speech. Say, if you go on the Gatwick Express website and hover over some text it will speak it to you and I think that is applicable for so many different conditions, people who are visually impaired, people who are dyslexic. We’ve got a whole host of other features for different areas such as magnification, high contrasting colours, dictionary definitions of words, it allows people to save as an MP3 and then playback.”
The second most used Recite Me feature on Morson.com is the language translation. We are proud to say that, thanks to Recite Me, our website can now be translated into over 100 different languages. This breaks down the barriers for people who may not have English as their first language, which in Canada alone, equates to over 20% of our recruits.
Why is accessibility so important?
Ross lives with dyslexia, so accessibility is something that is very close to his heart. He talks about why it’s so important to get it right in the recruitment industry…
“Accessibility, particularly in the recruitment industry is so important because that’s the area that people like myself, have issues with. It really does take the recruitment industry to get behind people with disabilities to allow us to access jobs and to switch to become more skills based. Like myself being dyslexic, I’ve got a very good working memory, I’ll remember everything like yesterday which is such a powerful thing within a company.”
“Companies need to take responsibility for their online content and if it’s accessible themselves, not relying on me as a person to buy the software (because it’s not cheap!). So that’s why we created Recite Me.”
Watch the video below
Morson Equals Opportunities
The way we engage with our clients, contractors and candidates is so important to us at Morson. This year we have launched the ‘Morson Equals Opportunities’ campaign which aims to revolutionise the way we engage with our stakeholders online and making our website fully accessible is a big part of that.
We understand that the best talent out there comes from all walks of life from different backgrounds with different abilities and needs. So, we want to open up our talent pools as much as we can… because everyone should have the opportunity to find their dream job.
Ross finishes with some food for thought:
“The disability discrimination act states that you have to make an adjustment for people who have got a disability. There’s a second reason as well, there’s a business case for it. National Car Rental did a study and 83% of people who had an accessibility need that wasn’t met by the website went to a different one.”
“If you’ve got a website and a quarter of your population can’t access it, it makes perfect business sense to be able to allow it to be accessed.”
Click the ‘Accessibility tools’ button on our homepage to search for our latest jobs using ReciteMe.
