De Twijn: Making the Website More Accessible with Text to Speech

De Twijn (pronounced ‘twine’) is a special education K-12 school in Zwolle, Overijssel, the Netherlands. De Twijn consists of two schools: a special education school for students ages four to twelve, and a middle/high school for special education for students aged twelve to eighteen.

At De Twijn, students receive individualized instruction catered toward individual needs and requirements. Students attending De Twijn meet one or more of the following criteria:

1. Student has physical disability that requires dependence on others in daily life or in education.
2. Student cannot keep up with the tempo of standard school for whatever reason, for example due to illness or learning disabilities.
3. Student requires intensive monitoring that cannot be met at standard school, for example behavioral problems.
4. Student requires temporary stay in a clinic due to epilepsy and cannot attend his/her standard school.

De Twijn has therefore a student base with wide, varying needs. In order to best communicate information to these students and their parents, De Twijn uses its public website, on which information is updated on a regular basis.

To support students with reading or learning difficulties, as well as to support busy parents who may not have time to read long articles, De Twijn started using ReadSpeaker’s text to speech on its website in the Dutch language.

De Twijn began working with ReadSpeaker in August of 2014, after connecting with ReadSpeaker. Jeff Schilders, ICT Manager at De Twijn, decided to implement ReadSpeaker to increase accessibility of online information. De Twijn began using ReadSpeaker to coincide with the launch of its newly redeveloped website.

De Twijn is impressed with the voice quality of ReadSpeaker, and recommends other schools begin using ReadSpeaker to increase accessibility of public information. Implementation was straightforward and did not require much time. De Twijn uses a modified version of ReadSpeaker’s listen button: a very simple ‘click-and-listen’ button with only start and stop features, for ease of use.

In addition to ReadSpeaker on its website, De Twijn is now exploring ReadSpeaker TextAid as an additional functionality to offer to its students for an individualized reading experience.

See how ReadSpeaker is used on the website of De Twijn: