Spotify for textbooks: How Perlego is making academic reading more accessible

Digital learning has made educational resources more widely available, but access remains a challenge for many students, particularly those with disabilities or limited budgets. London-based edtech company Perlego is tackling these barriers through a subscription-based digital library with access to more than 1.5 million books, alongside accessibility features, such as text-to-speech, adjustable fonts and reading tools. The company has raised over €70 million in funding. I spoke to Gauthier Van Malderen, founder and CEO of Perlego, to learn more. From expensive textbooks to digital subscriptions I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers university textbooks being heinously expensive. When I studied in Australia, textbooks — including those written by my lecturers — were compulsory, and I remember spending around €400 per semester at a minimum. Worse, books were frequently updated, making it difficult to buy second-hand copies. Van Malderen had a similar experience studying in I