Categories:
- One in ten people in Spain has a disability, which can be a disadvantage in terms of education and learning.
- To address this unequal access, the edtech company ODILO incorporates multiple features that guarantee access for all types of people to an Unlimited Learning Ecosystem, through a wide variety of quality multi-format educational resources.
- The company is certified in compliance with the European standard UNE-EN 301549:2020 on ‘Accessibility for ICT Products and Services’.
Madrid, August 8, 2023 – According to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE), in 2022 there were 4.38 million people in Spain who reported having some type of disability. This figure represents approximately 9.5% of the country’s population. In terms of education, ensuring that people with disabilities do not encounter barriers when accessing materials is still an ongoing challenge.
With the aim of proposing a solution to this problem, ODILO, a Spanish EdTech that allows all types of organizations to create their own Unlimited Learning Ecosystem, has a wide range of features incorporated seamlessly into its ecosystems. These features cater to any type of disability, regardless of type or severity. In this way, the company ensures that every person can access their catalog of more than 4 million multi-format resources without any kind of barrier.
The application has an ‘Accessibility Mode’ that modifies its startup interface so that users with visual and/or motor disabilities are not hindered when opening it. It also has clear buttons for menus and alerts, menu bars that initially open when entering the content viewer, and navigation arrows in the viewer to turn pages. In addition, the settings icons function as buttons, allowing you to change settings without having to click and swipe.
It is also compatible with the most widely-used screen reading systems, such as VoiceOver (iOS), TalkBack (Android), or JAWS (Windows), so that visually impaired people can navigate freely through the interface, both in the application and in the web version. Similarly, it includes ‘Text-to-Speech’ functionality, which reads documents with the device’s or browser’s speech engine and in the web version facilitates a number of additional voice commands. For example, “start reading”, “stop reading” or “next page”, among others.
For people with dyslexia, ODILO makes use of ‘Open Dyslexia’, software that allows the use of a special font that facilitates reading for these users, makes it possible to increase or decrease the font size, line spacing and margins, as well as to change the background color of the reading pages. At the same time, the application has a ‘High contrast’ mode (black and white) for users with color blindness or vision difficulties that make it difficult to distinguish elements.
In terms of content, ODILO also offers different types of formats, such as audio books, videos with subtitles, e-books with ‘Read-Along’ capability, etc. Thus, it facilitates learning adapted to all types of disabilities, while responding to the educational needs of each of its users.
According to Miguel Rodriguez, ODILO’s Business Manager, “We have a strong commitment to ensure that people with disabilities do not encounter any kind of barrier when starting their learning process. Therefore, we include multiple features that guarantee their access to content and that they can expand their education by creating a learning ecosystem tailored to their goals and aspirations”.
As a guarantee that these features allow any user to access the ecosystem without any inconvenience, ODILO has been certified by Applus+ in the UNE-EN 301549:2020 standard for ‘Accessibility for ICT Products and Services’. This is a standard that guarantees compliance with European functional requirements that ensure accessibility for all people, regardless of the type of device from which they connect.
ABOUT ODILO
ODILO is a B2B2C company which has created a new category in the education market: Unlimited Learning Ecosystems. In this way, the firm allows any organization to create its own fully customized learning ecosystems, and offer its users unlimited access to the world’s largest catalog of educational content and create all kinds of learning experiences without restrictions. In addition, through the use of Artificial Intelligence, ODILO enables the creation of unique learning paths and experiences for both organizations and users, as well as its unique Business Intelligence system that is capable of measuring all possible forms of learning, and also offers the advisory service of industry experts.
More than 8,500 organizations in 52 countries – including governments in Europe, North America, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Australia and Africa; academic leaders such as Peking University and top companies such as Vodafone, Nestlé and Banco Santander – have already created Unlimited Learning Ecosystems from the more than 4 million resources available on the platform. In total, ODILO is part of the learning experiences of more than 170 million users worldwide.