Do you use Accessibility Toolbars on Websites? Royal Shrewsbury Hospital wants to hear your views
Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, which serves 70,000 patients in Wales, is undergoing big changes, including rebuilding the hospital and creating a new website. They know the current website isn’t easy to use and need to overhaul it. Right now, the site has an accessibility toolbar that helps people change font size, colours, use a screen reader, or translate the page.
Before they build the new website, they need to decide whether to keep the toolbar on the current one. Guidance being issued to hospital trusts recommends phasing out these toolbars. This is primarily due to cost of licences especially when newer technology might do the same things without needing a toolbar. They are engaging with people as part of their Equality Impact Assessment and want to hear from those who use accessibility toolbars:
- Do these accessibility toolbars add value to websites?
- How accessible / useful are they?
- Do you use accessibility toolbars or prefer to use your own existing software / tools?
- Whether accessibility toolbars create any barriers with people’s own software / tools?
Please share any views on this topic with Rachel Jones rachel.jones@rnib.org.uk.
Posted on the 31st of July 2025