Accessibility: E-books and Online Resources

Electronic books or e-books are electronic versions of physical books which can be read online on a computer, mobile phone, laptop or tablet. 

These are some of the advantages of using e-books:

• they are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, on or off campus,

• for the majority of titles you don’t have to wait for a copy to be returned,

• you can easily search the content of an e-book, including  the text, table of contents, appendices, and bibliography, 

• range of in-built accessibility options or features.  These include the ability to:

• change colours, contrasts and fonts
• zoom in and out
• navigate using your keyboard
• use text to speech software or read-aloud features

The majority of our e-books are available on three main platforms or websites – Ebook Central, VLeBooks  and O'Reilly Learning Platform. The accessibility features may vary between the different e-book platforms.  Please see below for information on the accessibility features of each platform including their accessibility statements.

Ebook Central accessibility statement 

The accessibility features on Ebook Central using Read Online allow users to:

• Search within an e-book for keywords and phrases 
• Zoom in up to 200% using browser tools without text spilling off screen.
• Listen to an e-book using a screen reader with Text Only Mode enabled
• Select their language from the Language option in the navigation bar
• Change the font to the OpenDyslexic typeface.

To turn on the accessibility options in Ebook Central:

• Go to the Ebook Central Platform
• click on the Profile icon in the top toolbar
• scroll down to Accessibility Settings
• Click on Enable Text Only Mode if you want to convert the e-book to plain text. 
• There is also an option to Enable OpenDyslexic typeface. When enabled, OpenDyslexic typeface is applied to all pages of Ebook Central.
• If any changes are made to the accessibility options, click on the Save Changes button to finish.

VLeBooks Accessibility Statement

The Read Online option on VLeBooks includes the following features:

• Searching within an e-book for keywords and phrases
• Table of Contents with direct links to chapters
• Selection of background colours
• Read Aloud software
• 20 levels of magnification using the built-in zoom function,  a reading font size of between 4 to 36 is achievable depending on device used.

There are also a range of accessibility options which you can choose and save as your preferences.  To access these options select Edit Accessibility Settings on the left side of the screen on the VLeBooks platform.

These options include:

• Large Font
• Dyslexic friendly font

Once you save your preferences they will be applied permanently until you change them.

O'Reilly Accessibility Statement

The O'Reilly e-book reader has the following features:

• Searching within an e-book by clicking or selecting the magnifying glass icon on the right-hand side of the screen.
• Zoom in up to 500% using the plus and minus options within your browser. There is no magnification function in the O'Reilly e-reader.
• Customise the font size, colour scheme, and other typographical preferences.
• OpenDyslexic font.
• The video player supports closed captioning and adjustable playback speeds. Full transcripts are available on some videos. 

To change the accessibility features you need to be in the e-book reader for the e-book title you are reading online. The Start button (read online) opens the e-book.  Select the cog on the right side of the book reader screen to access the Viewer Settings menu.

You can then:

• change the font size to Small, Medium and Large
• change the page and background colour.  There are three options - white, sepia and black.
• change the font to OpenDyslexic.

As a student or member of staff at Bradford College you have access to a wide range of electronic or online resources, from databases which can help you find information relating to your assignment or research, to the full text of journals and books online. 

Most of our online resources are available off campus. Using these online resources requires logging in with your College username and password; you are then authenticated as a valid user.

Many of the library’s online resources have accessibility features available. To find out more about the accessibility features of a specific online resource or database please go to the A to Z of Online Databases.  We have included the Accessibility Statement for each online database where that information is available.