We are on a mission to make learning accessible to all by providing unlimited access to all the resources students need to learn. In doing so, we also want to ensure that this access is as inclusive as possible to all the different types of learners around the world, including those with learning disabilities and auditory, motor or visual impairments. So, we're committed to building a product that meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) v.2.1 Level AA standard and the Section 508 standard of the Rehabilitation Act.

To learn more about getting the most out of Perlego, you can visit the using Perlego section of our Help Centre. Here you can take a tour of our virtual library, receive step-by-step troubleshooting, and find guides on each of our features that are supported with visuals and geared towards accessibility.

View our Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) by clicking the button below.

Perlego was awarded in 2023 a Gold rating of 100% by Aspire, the verification service for accessibility statements.

Help us improve

Perlego is always striving to be as accessible as possible as we continue to grow. If you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions regarding accessibility please feel encouraged to reach out to our Customer Support Team through our chat service (Intercom) or via [email protected].

We’d love to hear from you and even have a guided prompt in our live chat box to make it easier for users getting in touch about accessibility in particular.

Please note, our Customer Support hours may vary and the average first response time is within 24 business hours.

Special enquiries

If you require support related to accessible content, such as needing an accessible or DRM-free copy of a textbook for a disabled student, you can email our Customer Support team at [email protected]. We will put you in touch with the relevant publisher within 5 days.

An alternative route for sourcing accessible content is the RNIB Bookshare service (in the UK), Benetech Bookshare program (in the US), and AccessText Network.

Note: The outcome of this request is at the publisher's discretion and cannot be guaranteed.

Firstly, a brief overview of the differences between ePUB and PDF formats:

ePUBs

In and outside of Perlego, ePUBs do not have page numbers that correspond to a physical book. Learn more about how to reference ePUBs.

PDFs

The Perlego interfaces (website and app) are compliant with WCAG 2.1 Level AA contrast guidelines for an optimal reading experience across the platform.

You can use extensions or plugins like Colour Changer Chrome extension to change the colour of the text and background based on your preference. It works across the website.

The Perlego website is fully responsive, meaning the layout automatically adapts to the screen size and orientation of the device it is being used on. You can even zoom over 200% without experiencing formatting issues or hiding of useful functionality.

The Perlego eReader allows you to easily adjust colours and text settings to make reading even easier. Your preferences will be automatically saved as the new default for all books.

ePUB experience

Note: Customisation of text spacing, line height, and margins is not currently available.

PDF experience

ePUB experience

PDF experience

The Perlego website provides the correct HTML semantics for navigational content. This includes:

We offer a "Skip to main content" link to allow users to skip tabbing through all interactive elements of the navigation and jump to the main content of the page. All interactive elements also have focus states.

Note: The extent of this feature may vary by publisher. You also cannot make highlights or notes using the keyboard just yet

Shortcuts are available for the features within the web eReader to make navigation even quicker and easier.

Perlego provides alt text and long descriptions when needed for all images and icons in the user interface.

Our content supports both alt text and long descriptions when provided by the publishers. We actively encourage all publishers to produce and provide ePUB content that adheres to the EPUB 3.1 specification.

Note: This is currently only available in the browser.

Read Aloud is available on Perlego's web and app platform in thousands of our top English, Spanish, German, Italian, and French titles.

We will continue to increase availability over time. To maximise accessibility while we roll out the feature and improve the functionality, we have started by ensuring that our most popular titles including, core foundational texts, are the first to be available.

Once selected, the Read Aloud tool begins reading from the start of the visible section on the screen and scrolls through paragraph by paragraph, highlighting the portion of the text that is being read at the time.

Readers can play, pause, skip, rewind, adjust the playback speed, or stop the audio.

Readers also have the ability to scroll beyond or before the text that is being read aloud to view other parts of the book and he tool will continue to highlight the text being read aloud.

The voice of the reader mimics a natural speaking tone, which was chosen for several reasons:

We are always looking for ways to maximise accessibility on our platform. This has included an internal audit of our compatibility with text-to-speech tools most commonly used by our learners.

We are partially compatible with Speechify and Read Aloud Chrome plugin. During testing, both tools performed better with an ePUB book in comparison to PDF. We noted that while tools can get stuck in the Perlego navigation, there are ways of working around it.

Here is how to make the most out of these text-to-speech tools:

Our audit revealed that the following tools are not yet compatible with Perlego: Read & Write, Natural Reader, Talkie, Intelligent Speaker, TTSFox, Text to speech (TTS) Firefox Add-on.

We aim to support screen readers such as Voiceover, NVDA, JAWS, and TalkBack across the Perlego platforms.

After conducting an internal and external audit, we can say that we partially support Voiceover & NVDA on the web platform. Our suggestion is to use:

These tools can be used with reasonable ease to navigate most of Perlego and make use of most of the tools and features.

There are, however, some issues with ARIA tagging that emerged from the audit, that are preventing some tools such as the search filters from being used to their maximum potential while using the screen readers.

These issues are currently being remediated as part of our development roadmap. We also noticed a few issues on the post sign up / welcoming experience (the questions we ask when you create an account) so we are currently working on a new version of this experience which has been created with accessibility in mind.

Note: We plan to continue testing popular screen-readers in order to suggest the most compatible tools to use when reading on Perlego.

If you encounter any issue on Perlego with your screen reader, please contact us at [email protected] and let us know. Your feedback is really important to us and helps us to continue building a better experience and a better platform to suit your needs.

While the platform is currently in English, it is being translated into other languages and will be in Spanish by the summer of 2023. We intend to translate the platform into other languages throughout the year as well.

Beyond the platform itself, we work with publishers who have content in multiple languages. We have books in 6 languages on Perlego: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese.

We are continually expanding our collection to include more content in these languages and encourage making book requests when we don’t have the content you are looking for.

Copy and paste is available as a feature in the Perlego eReader. This is currently only available on desktop web browsers. You will be able to copy up to 10% of a book, so be sure to only copy what you need to paste outside of Perlego.

The copy limit is decided by publishers and fair dealing under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

Printing follows the same 10% restriction and cannot be done from inside the eReader itself.

Note: Copy and paste is not yet available on the app.

Currently, all of the books on Perlego are subject to copyright rules agreed upon between Perlego and our partnered publishers. We’ve prioritised working alongside credible, well-known publishers. Taking care to ensure their trust, fairness, protection, and the promotion of their shared materials on Perlego. That means that for now, there are no DRM-free books provided directly by Perlego.

However, all learners on Perlego can embed external content on Perlego in their Workspaces and share it with those who have a subscription as well as those who don’t. Workspaces on Perlego support embeds or links to articles, videos, PDFs, ePUBs, documents etc. Learn more about what can be embedded into a Workspace. Depending on the content and the way it was uploaded, it can be consumed directly on Perlego, or downloaded from the original website.

Perlego has an unlimited access model. We do not limit user access with Digital Rights Management tools, therefore we avoid the traditional “one user, one book” model.

DRM restrictions that do apply are:

We also intend to add open-source books to Perlego in the near future.

As long as you have a stable internet connection you can access your Perlego library of more than 1 million books.

Please note - you cannot download books on the browser at this time.

Download up to 30 books at a time to read either online or offline using the Perlego iOS & Android app. Your library automatically syncs between your devices so you can pick up where you left off. Downloads will expire after 30 days, but you are welcome to renew them anytime.

You're not able to export a book off of Perlego (for example onto a personal eReader) as this goes against copyright laws and publisher rights.

Perlego is optimised for the latest versions of desktop browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari.

Whilst the Perlego app is compatible with most mobile devices that run iOS and Android, there are some minimum specifications to ensure that our customers receive the Perlego reading experience they expect:

Android specifications:

• Version 8 (Oreo) and above

• Minimum 1.5GB RAM

iOS specifications:

• Version 13 and above

• Minimum 1.5GB RAM

We always recommend being on the latest software and app version🤖 to help you have the best experience you can on Perlego.

Perlego is always striving to be as accessible as possible as we continue to grow.

If you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions please feel encouraged to reach out to our Customer Support Team via [email protected] or live chat - we'd love to hear from you!

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