When building or enhancing any area of Perlego, the online learning library, we incorporate accessibility and inclusive standards throughout the entire development and design process.
That starts with understanding our users. To do this better, we’re developing a range of typical user ‘personas’, incorporating everything that might be an obstacle to learning and teaching, from poor internet connectivity to a range of disabilities. Starting from this point means we are embracing a variety of users from the beginning of the development process.
To ensure the knowledge we’ve learned about our users and building inclusively is shared across the business, we’ve created design & development guidelines for our team to ensure consistency across the business.
“As we grow it's easy to lose touch with our original processes, so I am keeping this top of mind and ensuring our design and development check-lists are standardised. We are soon to roll out training for the entire company - from developers, designers, quality testers to those who work on the commercial areas of the business, like sales and marketing. Ensuring our external communications are accessible is just as important.” Tiphaine de Font-Réaulx, Lead Product Design at Perlego
We sometimes build features that seek to solve a specific problem for those with additional needs. In most cases, solving a problem for one obstacle enhances the entire experience for all users. A great example of this is our new Read Aloud feature. This can help users with visual impairments or difficulties with reading, however feedback tells us that many users simply prefer the experience of hearing a book over reading it.
A few recent examples of the accessibility focused features we’ve built, and the impact they’ve had:
Read Aloud:
This feature allows our users to consume books within our catalogue in an audio format, using computer generated text to speech voice. Read Aloud was originally created to answer the needs of users with Dyslexia or other cognitive disabilities as it allows the user to follow the text as it's being read aloud. We’ve seen through usage of the tool that it’s having an impact across our entire community, by helping them consume content in alternative ways.
- Our users who adopt Read Aloud on average read 33% longer.
- Our users who adopt Read Aloud on average are reading 20% more.
- "I am dyslexic and have used many features like this, yours is the best I have used.” Student user
BeeLine Reader:
Our integration with Beeline adds a colour gradient to text to help you read faster and more accurately. This text effect helps people with Dyslexia, ADD, and ADHD to more easily follow lines of text, avoiding skipping or re-reading the same line.
- Our users who use a Beeline colour setting on average read 19% more.
- “The new font coloring is great! It really does help read faster and stay engaged” Student user
Open Dyslexic Font:
Users can select ‘Open Dyslexic’ as a font type, in the customisation section of our ereader.
- 3,219 users have adopted the "Open Dyslexic" font as their font of choice for ePub formatted texts on Perlego.
- "Not only has Perlego saved me a fortune on academic books, but it also has a dyslexia font which I have found an invaluable tool for learning." Student user
- "I love the availability of the Open Dyslexic font and the text shading!" Student user
“We take on new projects for accessible features or enhancements to the product with inclusivity at the core based on research and user feedback and requests. When there’s a good match, we consider how we can incorporate it. Sometimes, in the case of the Beeline reader, we spot opportunities for partnership. I’m always trying to stay up to date, recently there have been interesting technologies surfaced on TikTok which have been useful as there is immediate user feedback. I’m also in online communities like the a11y Slack group where I read articles and discuss topics with others”. Tiphaine de Font-Réaulx, Lead Product Design at Perlego
We're working hard to ensure Perlego takes an inclusive approach, as demonstrated by achieving a gold-rated, 100% ASPIRE score for our accessibility statement. We know this is an evolving area and we'll keep striving to deliver our mission of accessible learning for all.
Get in touch if you’d like to learn more about how universities across the globe are supporting students with Perlego.
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