Manage your preferences

The Leeds Beckett website is designed to enable you to manage your own privacy preferences. By clicking on 'Cookies' below you can manage what data the site collects about your browsing. This will only maintain if you are on your own device or using a synched version of your chosen browser. If you are using a shared or public machine without synching your browser then there is no need to change the preferences.

Our site is built with accessibility in mind and we seek to adhere to the WACG AA levels of compliance for digital accessibility. To support that we have provided instructions on managing animations below.

Cookies

Necessary Cookies
Necessary cookies enable you to use all the different parts of leedsbeckett.ac.uk. Without them services that you have asked for cannot be provided. Necessary cookies can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.
Analytical Cookies
Analytical cookies help us understand how people are using our websites, so we can improve them and provide a better user experience. We also sometimes get our approved partner companies to analyse how people are using Leeds Beckett Websites and they may set their own analytical cookies in order to do this.
Marketing Cookies
Marketing cookies allow us to provide you with online adverts that are the most relevant and useful for you.
For more information please view our Privacy Policy

Animations & Interaction

The Leeds Beckett University website occasionally uses animations to page elements and animated gifs to add impact to pages. If you wish to stop them from playing for accessibility purposes or for personal preference then please see the guidance below. Please note that browsers sometimes change how they operate, so please refer to your browser help files to find their latest information.
How do I turn off animations?

Chrome

Chrome users will need to use browser extensions. Animation Policy from Google will help you set your own preferences.

Microsoft Edge

There is currently no way to disable animations within Microsoft Edge. Users of Edge (Chromium) browser can install the Chrome extensions above and use them.

Internet Explorer

To stop animations on a single page you can just press the 'Esc' key. This will stop the animation on that page. If you wish to restart the animations you need to refresh the page. To permanently disable the playing of animated GIF images, open Internet Options > Advanced tab. Under the Multimedia section, uncheck the Play animations in webpage check-box, click Apply and Exit and then restart your computer.

Firefox

Type about:config in Firefox address bar and hit Enter to open Settings. Search for the image.animation_mode flag and change its value from Normal to None. Once you restart Firefox this will disable animations.

Library & Student Services

Want to listen rather than read?

You can use the Read Aloud tool in Microsoft Edge to listen to this blog post Did you know that you can listen to academic resources rather than reading them? There are lots of reasons you may choose to do this. You might find it easier to take in information by listening to it rather than reading. Perhaps you want a break from looking at a screen. Or you might be short of time and want to multitask; you could listen to audio versions of eBooks and journal articles whilst travelling, exercising or doing other things. And if you have dyslexia or another disability, you might need to listen to audio versions of resources due to difficulties reading printed text. There are lots of options for listening to resources.

Written By

Library and Student Services

Published on 03 Oct 2023

Reading an eBook?

Check which collection it is from and have a look at the relevant ‘Accessibility help’ link on the eBook collections page. This will tell you all the options for having that title read aloud, which often include assistive software, browser tools and plugins. These tools can also be used to read other resources, such as journal articles

Read & Write software

Read & Write software is available on all Library PCs and has a text-to-speech tool for reading webpages aloud, as well as a PDF reader for PDF files. It also has an Audio Maker tool for converting text into an MP3 file, which you could transfer to a mobile device and listen to it on the go. There is also a freely available Read & Write toolbar for Google Chrome web browser which you can use to read the content of web pages, Google Docs and Office 365 files aloud.

Microsoft Accessibility Tools

Microsoft Office and Edge web browser have an inbuilt Read Aloud tool for reading documents, webpages and PDF aloud. Alternatively you may find Microsoft Immersive Reader useful which, as well as reading Word documents and web pages aloud, also enables you to change font size and style, text and line spacing and background colour.

Adobe Reader

You can have downloaded PDF files read aloud using freely available Adobe Reader software.

VLebooks inbuilt reader tool

Reading an eBook from the VLebooks collection? This has a handy inbuilt ReadALoud tool. You just need to go to the page that you want to read and click on the ReadALoud icon in the top right hand corner. The text will automatically be read aloud, and a box will open on the page which allows you to adjust the volume, rewind, forward and pause.

SensusAccess

The Library also subscribes to SensusAccess - a web-based tool which you can use, subject to the conditions of use and copyright law, to convert documents into more accessible formats, including MP3 files.