Many thanks to Martin McKay, Technical Director and one of the founders of Texthelp (developers of BrowseAloud), for responding to my previous post All aboard the PAS 78 gravy train.
In a refreshingly sincere and straightforward email Martin reassured me of his personal commitment to the cause of accessibility and literacy. He informed me that the “Dyslexic Duncan” issue two years ago was caused by an employee acting on their own accord, against company policy, and that Texthelp acted swiftly and decisively immediately following the incident. He also told me that the news item - erroneously claiming that Texthelp is recommended in PAS 78 for their text-to-speech software product Browsealoud
- has since been removed and procedures have been put in place to avoid such mistakes in future.
I would like to thank Martin for his candid response and for addressing the issue so quickly.