As university students return to campus this month, new data from digital learning platform Perlego two years into its partnership with the University of Leeds – one of the UK’s largest universities, with around 36,000 students – shows the scale at which accessibility features built into its digital library are being used.
Since launch, students at Leeds have used Perlego’s Read Aloud text-to-speech tool 40,871 times, activated dyslexia-friendly font settings 2,532 times, and changed text size 11,391 times. The university says accessibility was the deciding factor in choosing Perlego as a digital partner, addressing a gap that had left 60% of reading list citations unavailable in any electronic format.
The partnership has also eliminated ‘turnaways’ – instances where students are denied access to a text because licence caps have been reached – during peak exam periods, and has seen students opening an average of 18+ books each across a catalogue of 1.5 million+ titles.
“Accessibility shouldn’t be an add-on to digital learning – it should be built in from the start,” said Gauthier Van Malderen, Founder and CEO of Perlego. “What we’re seeing at Leeds shows what happens when it is: over 40,000 uses of Read Aloud alone and a library team telling us it’s changed how confidently they can support every student – not just some of them. We’re proud to work with universities like Leeds who put inclusion at the centre of their digital strategy and this data shows the difference it makes when technology is designed to support learning, rather than just deliver content.”
Isabel Archer, Access & Acquisitions Manager (Acquisitions & Reading Lists), University of Leeds said: “One of the things that initially drew us to Perlego was the coverage of reading list titles that we couldn’t provide electronically through other providers, and in some cases couldn’t obtain in print either. We’ve seen a really positive impact from filling those gaps in our reading list provision.
With Perlego’s analytics dashboard, it’s particularly interesting to see engagement with accessibility features and how our users are interacting with those alongside the learning tools. It helps us identify usage, track engagement and understand user behaviour.”
Aman, an English student at University of Leeds said, “Read Aloud is definitely my favourite Perlego feature. You don’t tend to get academic books in audio form, which is a huge benefit. I use it to study when I’m walking or cooking, so it’s a way to add a lot more reading to my life – a great accessible resource you can’t really find anywhere else.”
