Scaling Accessibility: how the University of Leeds is broadening its digital library to enhance the student experience

At this year's National Acquisitions Group (NAG) Seminar, Perlego was joined by the University of Leeds for a fireside chat on a question that matters to libraries everywhere: how do you widen access to course content while putting accessibility at the heart of the student experience? 💡

The session, Scaling Accessibility: Broadening Digital Libraries to Enhance the Student Experience, was chaired by Katharine Templeton, Perlego's Head of UK Partnerships, in conversation with Isabel Archer, Access & Acquisitions Manager at the University of Leeds. It also marked the launch of a new partner case study, drawing on 18 months of insights from the Leeds and Perlego partnership. Here's our summary of the key themes.

1. Accessibility built-in for all, not bolted-on 📖

For Leeds, the partnership didn't begin with an active search for a new supplier. As Isabel explained, the first conversation was driven by curiosity, and it was the platform itself, and its accessibility features in particular, that quickly stood out.

What impressed the team was that those features sit front and centre wherever a student is interacting with a book, rather than being tucked away behind menus or dependent on a student already knowing what they need. As Isabel put it:

"They're there for everyone, rather than knowing that you need to use an accessibility feature, seeking out that information and working out ‘how do I apply this to the book’. They're just there."

The result has been high, organic uptake. Tools like Read Aloud have proven especially popular precisely because they're visible: a student who would never have gone looking for a text-to-speech option can see it, try it, and discover it works better for them.

2. Closing the content gap on reading lists 📚

Alongside accessibility, the breadth of titles available was a major early draw. Leeds found that a significant amount of the background reading on its reading lists, material it had previously been unable to provision electronically, was available on Perlego.

"Around 60% of the titles we couldn't provision electronically on reading lists were actually available electronically on Perlego."

That coverage has had a particularly noticeable impact in areas that have traditionally been hard to license. Isabel highlighted English literature as an example, where unlimited-access electronic licences for fiction titles had often been a struggle to secure. Being able to provision those texts has meant academics can adopt and embed them on reading lists far more readily than before.

This led to the remarkable results of an exam season with zero turnaways (students unable to access the book they needed).

3. Meeting students where they already are 🔍

A recurring theme was discoverability. Rather than asking students to learn a new system, Leeds built the titles into the tools students and academics already use. All individual titles were made discoverable through the library catalogue, and surfaced in Leganto, the university's reading list system, so academics can find and add them straightforwardly.

"It's been really important in terms of meeting the users where they're already at, not asking them to go into a different system and start searching there."

That decision to embed records into existing workflows has been central to the strong organic engagement the team has seen. Discovery happens naturally, in the places students are already looking.

4. The impact: reading engagement and actionable data 📊

Eighteen months on from launch, the partnership's impact shows up across several measures. Beyond the expanded coverage, Leeds has seen strong student engagement and consistently positive feedback on the platform and its accessibility tools. The data also points to depth as well as reach: dwell time is healthy, meaning students aren't just landing on the platform but staying, interacting with the text, and making heavy use of the built-in learning tools. For Isabel, seeing the original goals of the partnership, greater inclusivity and accessibility, borne out in the usage data has been especially rewarding:

"It's really interesting as a librarian looking at that data and being able to see the usage of particular titles, and to see those in comparison to other platforms as well."

That granularity, including insights on usage of features like Read Aloud, is something the new case study explores in detail.

5. Advice for institutions planning large-scale inclusivity
projects 🤝

Asked what advice she'd give other institutions embarking on inclusivity projects at scale, Isabel pointed first to the technical foundations. Getting the integration right, making everything available through Primo, enabling single sign-on, and connecting OpenAthens, was a genuine learning curve, but also one of the most productive parts of the collaboration.

Just as important, she said, is a willingness to experiment and adapt. The partnership began with strong, direct promotion of the platform, but the team soon learned that organic usage was doing the heavy lifting, and adjusted their approach accordingly:

"We started with quite a strong promotion... and then we found out, actually, it's that organic usage that was really working. So we didn't need to do that same marketing approach."

For Isabel, that openness, reviewing how things are going, being ready to change course, and approaching any issue collaboratively from both sides, is the hallmark of a strong edtech partnership.

Looking ahead 🎓

What came through most clearly from the conversation is that scaling accessibility isn't a single feature or a one-off project; it's the combined effect of inclusive design, broad content coverage, seamless discovery, and a genuinely collaborative supplier relationship. By building accessibility in, by default and meeting students in the systems they already use, the University of Leeds has turned a curious first conversation into a partnership with measurable impact on the student experience.

The full Scaling Accessibility case study explores these themes in more depth, including the usage data behind the accessibility tools and the lessons learned across the first 18 months of the partnership.

Get in touch to find out how Perlego can help make course materials more accessible and
elevate student engagement at your institution. 📞