Black Swan State Theatre Company of Western Australia acknowledges the Whadjuk people of the Nyoongar Nation as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live.

First Nations People have been telling stories on this country for many thousands of years, and we acknowledge their incredible contribution to the cultural and environmental landscape we reside in.

Accessibility User Guide

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Accessibility User Guide

How to get the most out of our website content by using assistive technology.

Black Swan State Theatre Company’s website is designed to make content available to the greatest possible audience, including readers who require assistive technology such as translation, text to speech functionality screen reader, styling options and reading aids.

Black Swan employs Recite Me, an online accessibility toolbar that lets you personalise your experience on our website, enabling you to choose how you interact with our content and products.

Key Features of the Toolbar

  • Translation and Language Support: The toolbar supports more than 100 languages, allowing you to read text in your preferred language. It also features a dictionary.

  • Text-to-Speech: The toolbar translates website text into natural-sounding speech in over 65 languages, allowing individuals with visual impairments or reading issues to understand our content better.

  • Customisable Reading Options: You can change the font styles, sizes, colours, and backdrop contrasts to your liking, improving readability and decreasing eye strain.

  • Immersive Reading Experience: Use a screen mask to focus on specific text, reducing distractions and enhancing concentration.

How to Use Our ACCESSIBILITY/LANGUAGE Toolbar

Our toolbar appears on left of our website, making it simple to customise our site in context to meet your specific needs.

To access the tool bar on:

Desktop: Click on the ‘Accessibility and language options’ button in the left -hand corner of our website, above the Log In button.

Mobile Devices: Click on the ‘accessibility’ icon floating in the top right corner of your screen.

Toolbar key features:

Play audio

  • Back: Rewind to the preceding paragraph of text.

  • Play: Press the Play button to read the text aloud.

  • Forward: Skip to the next paragraph of text.


Text options

  • Decrease: This will reduce the text size.

  • Font: You can alter the font style of text.

  • Increase: This increases the font size.


Colour, ruler, and screen mask

  • Colour: Change the background, text, and link colours.

  • Ruler: Click to enable the reading ruler.

  • Screen Mask: Will produce a letterbox for focused viewing of a section of the page.


Dictionary, translation, and magnification

  • Dictionary: Highlight and click on this to see the definition of the word.

  • Language: Translate text into another language.

  • Magnifier: Click and drag the magnifying glass to magnify the text on the screen.


Plain text, margins, and audio download

  • Text Mode: Remove images to view in plain text mode.

  • Margins: To change the text dimensions, narrow the width of the text column.

  • Download Audio: Highlight the text and click the button to download it as an audio file.


Settings: Change your Recite settings

  • Reset: This restores the default settings.

  • User Guide: This is an overview of the Recite Me Toolbar Features.


Keyboard shortcuts

  • Tab: to go to the next toolbar button.

  • Shift + Tab: to move backwards

  • Spacebar: Use the spacebar to choose a button and change toggles

  • CTRL + Right: Press to play the next element

  • CTRL + Left: Press to play the previous element

  • CTRL + ALT + P: Press to play the current element

  • CTRL + ALT + F: Press to see the font menu

  • CTRL + ALT + C: Press to display the theme menu

  • CTRL + R: Press to enable or disable the ruler

  • CTRL + D: Press to enable or disable the dictionary

  • CTRL + L: Press to see translation languages

  • CTRL + X: Press to enable or disable text-only mode

  • CTRL + M: Press to display page margin settings

  • CTRL + Shift + O: Press to display settings menu

  • CTRL + S: Press to save settings

Other ways we employ accessibility across our site

We seek to comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 that is AA compliance. Meeting these principles enhances both accessibility and user experience.

We have used a range of approaches to ensure our compliance with accessibility standards, including:

  • Page Titles: Web page titles describe content or purpose.

  • We offer text substitutes for any non-textual items.

  • Contrast Ratio: Majority of text and text graphics are visually presented with a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1.

  • Text Resizing: Text can be resized without using assistive technology.

  • Keyboard Accessibility: Website content is fully accessible via a keyboard interface.

  • Bypassing Content Blocks: There is a way for bypassing content blocks that appear on several web pages.

  • Flashes: Our website does not contain anything that flashes more than three times in a single second, or the flash falls below the general and red flash criteria.

  • Links: Many links contain title properties that provide more information about the link, and in most situations, the link’s content already thoroughly explains the target. Wherever feasible, links are written so that they make sense outside of context. Many browsers (including JAWS, Home Page Reader, Lynx, and Opera) may extract a page’s list of links and explore them individually.

  • PDF’s: We have attempted to reduce the quantity of PDFs on the website. Where they occur, they are accompanied by a link to the Adobe website, where you can download free Acrobat Reader software to view the documents. Adobe has updated its free reader to incorporate screen reading capabilities.

  • Images: Decorative and functional pictures have empty ALT attributes. Other images on the site include detailed ALT attributes.

  • Markup: In markup-based content, elements have complete start and end tags, are nested according to their requirements, do not contain duplicate attributes, and all IDs are unique, unless the specifications allow otherwise.

An external expert evaluated this website’s accessibility and determined that it partially conforms to WCAG 2.1 level AA. Partially conformant indicates that certain sections of the content do not yet completely conform to the full AA accessibility level. We are continuously working on organisational accessibility.

We are working hard to improve our accessibility initiatives and welcome any feedback. If you are unable to access any information on this website, please email hello@blackswantheatre.com.au or phone 08 6212 9300, and we will assist you further.

Accessibility FAQs

Do I need to download anything to enable the accessibility toolbar in my browser?

No. The toolbar is cloud-based, so there is no need to install anything on your computer.

How can I disable the auto-read feature?

To disable the auto-read function, click the “Settings” button. This will provide you with a list of three functions to choose from. You must click on the bottom to the right of the option labelled “Autoplay”. This will then prevent automatic reading.

How can I change the language?

To change the language on Black Swan’s website, simply click “Change language” in the toolbar and select from the drop-down list. Once you’ve chosen your preferred language from the list, the site will be translated into that language.

Languages with the “Audio” icon indicate that the text on the webpage can be read aloud by the toolbar in the language you have chosen.

How do I turn off the accessibility toolbar?

To close the accessibility toolbar, simply click the X icon to the right of the toolbar.