The University of Leeds has expanded electronic access to reading-list materials through its partnership with Perlego, while usage data shows students making extensive use of accessibility and digital learning features.
The University of Leeds has expanded students’ access to digital academic materials through its partnership with Perlego, addressing gaps that previously left 60% of reading-list citations unavailable electronically.
Two years into the partnership, the university has also recorded extensive use of accessibility features provided through the digital learning platform.
Leeds, which has around 36,000 students, selected Perlego partly because of the accessibility capabilities incorporated into its digital library.
Students have since used the platform’s Read Aloud text-to-speech feature 40,871 times, activated dyslexia-friendly font settings 2,532 times and changed text size 11,391 times.
Perlego said its accessibility and learning features have collectively been used nearly 708,000 times by Leeds students.
The platform has also increased the availability of academic texts that the university previously struggled to provide electronically.
“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,” said Isabel Archer, Access & Acquisitions Manager (Acquisitions & Reading Lists), University of Leeds.
The university is also using analytics from the platform to understand how students interact with digital academic resources and accessibility tools.
“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,” said Archer.
Another objective of the project has been to address restrictions created by conventional digital textbook licensing.
The university has eliminated ‘turnaways’ during peak examination periods. These occur when a student attempts to access an electronic text but is prevented from doing so because the maximum number of simultaneous users permitted under its licence has been reached.
Students have access to a catalogue containing more than 1.5 million titles through Perlego and are opening an average of more than 18 books each.
The digital approach also provides alternative ways for students to consume academic material rather than relying exclusively on reading text from a screen.
“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,” said Aman, an English student at University of Leeds.
Perlego said accessibility capabilities are designed to be incorporated directly into the digital reading experience rather than provided as separate services.
“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.”
For Leeds, the partnership provides both broader access to reading-list material and data about how students are using different learning and accessibility functions, helping its library team assess engagement with digital resources.
