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 \u2013 one of the UK\u2019s largest universities, with around 36,000 students \u2013 shows the scale at which accessibility features built into its digital library are being used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since launch, students at Leeds have used Perlego\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The partnership has also eliminated \u2018turnaways\u2019 \u2013 instances where students are denied access to a text because licence caps have been reached \u2013 during peak exam periods, and has seen students opening an average of 18+ books each across a catalogue of 1.5 million+ titles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAccessibility shouldn\u2019t be an add-on to digital learning \u2013 it should be built in from the start,\u201d said Gauthier Van Malderen, Founder and CEO of Perlego. \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing at Leeds shows what happens when it is: over 40,000 uses of Read Aloud alone and a library team telling us it\u2019s changed how confidently they can support every student \u2013 not just some of them. We\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Isabel Archer, Access & Acquisitions Manager (Acquisitions & Reading Lists), University of Leeds said: \u201cOne of the things that initially drew us to Perlego was the coverage of reading list titles that we couldn\u2019t provide electronically through other providers, and in some cases couldn\u2019t obtain in print either. We\u2019ve seen a really positive impact from filling those gaps in our reading list provision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With Perlego\u2019s analytics dashboard, it\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aman, an English student at University of Leeds said, \u201cRead Aloud is definitely my favourite Perlego feature. You don\u2019t 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\u2019s a way to add a lot more reading to my life \u2013 a great accessible resource you can\u2019t really find anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 \u2013 one of the UK\u2019s largest universities, with around 36,000 students \u2013 shows the scale at which accessibility features built into its digital library are being used. Since launch, students […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4189,"featured_media":171387,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18793,26733,93,26135],"tags":[646,24564,25860,26734,25773,8022,26746,26735,3136],"class_list":["post-171386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-learning-management-systems","category-top-stories","category-university","tag-accessibility","tag-assistive-technology","tag-digital-accessibility","tag-digital-learning","tag-education-technology","tag-higher-education","tag-inclusive-education","tag-perlego","tag-university-of-leeds"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4189"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171386"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171388,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171386\/revisions\/171388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}