Digital Reading in Universities Fails Students It Was Meant to Include

Universities have spent two decades moving their reading lists online, on the assumption that digital texts make higher education more open, more flexible and more accessible. A new study suggests that this assumption is breaking down in ways that few institutions have confronted. Anna Rich-Abad of the University of Nottingham and Jamie Wood of the University of Oxford surveyed 440 students and 96 staff from more than fifty institutions in ten countries, most of them in the United Kingdom and Portugal and most from reading-heavy Humanities disciplines. Their analysis, published in Discover Education, finds that digital reading is failing precisely the students it was meant to empower: those with disabilities, those from poorer households and those whose bodies simply cannot endure hours of screen-based study without pain.

The research, funded by the Quality Assurance Agency as a Collaborative Enhancement Project and approved by the University of Lincoln’s ethics committee, was built on an ethos of co-production. Six student researchers were recruited and trained in qualitative coding using NVivo, then inductively analysed free-text survey responses alongside four project leads. They also wrote reflective blog posts about their own digital reading experiences, which the authors used as first-hand evidence to interpret the survey data. The team deliberately asked students and staff parallel questions about the challenges of reading online, and the mismatch between the two groups’ answers turned out to be one of the study’s most revealing findings.

Thematic analysis of the qualitative responses revealed two overarching themes. The first concerned the availability of digital texts, shaped by digital poverty, inequitable access to technology and deficiencies in technical skills, alongside a lack of support, guidance and developed pedagogy. The second concerned accessibility once texts were available, encompassing physical challenges and mental health issues, learning difficulties, and digital distraction and concentration. Students and staff tended to emphasise different barriers. Academics were generally more concerned about learning habits and limited skillsets hampering engagement, while students pointed repeatedly to contextual and practical obstacles, from broken devices to poor Wi-Fi outside campus.

Digital poverty emerged as a barrier that staff rarely mentioned but students described constantly. Respondents reported having no access to Wi-Fi or connections of such poor quality that reading materials would not load, particularly in university residences and family homes. Others described devices that were broken and took months to replace, or that were never adequate for the task in the first place. Screen reading technology provided to some students failed to work with certain file formats. Some materials could not be downloaded at all and could only be viewed online. The sheer multiplicity of platforms used by publishers and libraries, each demanding its own login and interface, added a cognitive tax that better-resourced students could absorb but poorer students could not. Although most institutions have policies ensuring students need not pay for course readings, some respondents reported struggling to get past paywalls, and those who preferred paper copies found that printing costs soon added up, with the environmental impact of printing an added concern.

The pedagogical picture was equally stark. Academics rated digital reading as essential for students in their discipline, averaging 7.90 out of 10, yet reported devoting little module time to teaching it, averaging only 4.96 out of 10. A keyword search for digital literacy and information literacy across all staff and student responses yielded no matches, suggesting these concepts have not entered everyday teaching vocabulary even as academics and students grapple with challenges that clearly fall under that rubric. Librarians and learning developers in the survey called for an attitudinal shift, arguing that lecturers assume students know how to read and forget to teach them how to tackle unfamiliar texts, and that normalising assistive technology and neurodiversity-friendly reading techniques would not require radical change. One student researcher described a steep learning curve coming from a school where online education was never utilised beyond making a PowerPoint.

Physical discomfort was perhaps the dominant theme in student responses. Eye strain, headaches, back pain and postural challenges were mentioned repeatedly, including by many students who did not categorise themselves as disabled. One student researcher wrote of detesting how difficult it is to sit comfortably and stare at a screen, describing the painful spinal petrification of sitting in one position and explaining that she often looked for hard copies where practical. This aligns with recent research into the musculoskeletal impact of online teaching and learning on students’ bodies. Digital reading platforms were also viewed in one case as exacerbating mental health issues because they militated against students meeting in person, with one respondent describing eternal, agonising loneliness when everyone is reading alone in their own little boxes off screens.

Students with learning difficulties faced compounded barriers. A small but significant proportion of respondents, 14.54 per cent or 64 students, self-identified as having a disability that affected their ability to read. Their survey answers showed they read less than their peers at every academic level, with 46.88 per cent reading only one to five hours per week and 6.25 per cent reading one hour or less. They also rated their confidence in reading effectively lower than non-disabled peers. Yet staff respondents often expressed confidence that appropriate support was already in place, with one UK Arts academic listing dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD, ADD, anxiety, depression and OCD as obstacles and asserting that universities are getting good at supporting these barriers. Student responses told a different story, noting that not all texts are accessible with the technology they use for dyslexia and that staff had minimal awareness of how inaccessible digital resources impede learning. One student researcher did describe using Read Aloud functionality to keep track of position in a text and improve concentration, illustrating how assistive features can genuinely help when they work.

Digital distraction and concentration emerged as a point of rare congruence between staff and students. Academics noted that reading online poses more distractions than reading offline, with social media, email and streaming services all a click away, and wondered whether students read as deeply on screen as on paper. Students, including nearly all of the student researchers, reported problems with focus and attention span, with some limiting the length of texts they were willing to read because their attention could not sustain it. Previous research cited in the study suggests reading online is a cognitively complex activity that forces readers to make more mental decisions than print, potentially reducing memory and cognitive mapping, and that digital readers tend to have a falsely inflated sense of their own reading performance. Many students responded by removing reading from the digital sphere altogether, taking notes on paper, accessing physical copies in the library, printing out readings or shifting physical location.

The divergence in how staff and students rated reading proficiency was striking. Students rated their own academic reading skills markedly higher than staff rated them, echoing Baron’s finding that digital readers overestimate their effectiveness. Staff, viewing student reading through a deficit lens, described students as lacking information literacy, critical thinking, resilience and confidence to deal with challenging texts, with one librarian noting that unfamiliar vocabulary or theories can be a big barrier for less confident students who lack the skill to get the gist of a work. One Arts academic described apathy, overwhelm, confusion and lack of self-confidence leading students to abandon reading at the first point of resistance. The authors argue that this deficit framing has negative consequences: training in digital reading skills is left largely to professional services and limited to induction, an approach shown to be less effective than integrated, discipline-based strategies.

The study’s conclusions carry weight beyond the Humanities sample that dominated the survey. The authors recommend that institutions should not assume all students have a high-quality laptop and constant access to adequate Wi-Fi and workspaces, and that instructors and technicians must ensure alternative formats are available, whether physical books or downloadable and printable materials at affordable prices or for free. Laptop loan systems, campus workspaces beyond the library, and wider provision of assistive technology to the entire university community rather than restricting it to students with disabilities are among the practical measures proposed. The authors also call for accessibility to be embedded at the core of emerging pedagogies for digital reading, citing the concept of digital accessibility literacy as a framework for integrating awareness, technical standards, inclusive design practices and continuous feedback into curricula. Perhaps most worryingly, the finding that students with disabilities read less and feel less confident raises questions about the efficacy of the much-heralded accessibility of digital platforms. The authors close by proposing systemic reflection on existing digital reading practices and pedagogies, and by urging further investigation into how the availability of digital texts can be improved and how practices of digital reading can be made genuinely accessible for all students, whatever their health, learning or socio-economic circumstances.

Subject of Research: Barriers inhibiting the availability and accessibility of digital reading in higher education

Article Title: Barriers inhibiting the availability and accessibility of digital reading in higher education

Article References: Rich-Abad, A., & Wood, J. (2026). Barriers inhibiting the availability and accessibility of digital reading in higher education. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 1196. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02102-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02102-8

Keywords: Barriers, inhibiting, availability, accessibility, digital, reading, higher, education, scientific research