Making Moodle More Accessible With Edwiser RemUI [Update]]

Making Moodle More Accessible with Edwiser RemUI [UPDATE]

If you think a great e-Learning business is just about earning huge profits, you might want to reconsider! And it’s not just limited to offering good course content. 

Transforming Digital Education

It’s the 21st century and a time where a pandemic has swept the entire globe. 

Things have changed DRASTICALLY and so have learning needs. 

It’s a straightforward concept – You have to keep up with changing times to maximize your reach. Period! 

e-Learning for All

Coming back to business! 

The truth is, a good business in the e-Learning sector cares about its learners – existing as well as prospective. It is fully aware of the various friction-causing elements that can impede learning. 

In a nutshell, to go from good to great, successful e-Learning ventures take user-experience very seriously! And they know for a fact that consistent user-experience across the entire spectrum of users and interfaces should always take top priority.  

So, goes without saying (but I’d still say it anyway) that the first step towards making education engaging and meaningful is to make it easily accessible to all the different categories of learners. 

How are they supposed to enjoy learning if they have no clue about how they can access and use the technology you offer? Put some effort, make things easier for them.

But why should you be concerned about making your Edutech offering accessible to all?

Read on to know!

Why Accessibility in Digital e-Learning Technology Matters

Learners with disabilities have aspirations too. So, it makes sense to remove accessibility constraints in using education technology. 

Also, when you build a product or service keeping in mind all human senses, it creates a sense of loyalty and gives you a competitive advantage as you’re in a much better position to capture potential learners or customers. 

These statistics offer another valid reason for you to explore this territory and make your digital offering accessibility-compliant: Do you know?  The purchasing power of assistive-technology Internet users is worth more than $350 billion.

According to the World Bank, one billion people, or 15% of the world’s population, experience some form of disability. That’s a lot of people, isn’t it? Ignoring such a huge community means losing out on the potential learners for your e-Learning program.

Better Accessibility = Improved Reach = Better Business

If you come to think of it! Apart from supporting the global mission to make digital education more fluid and simple to access, I see a larger business opportunity here. 

You get to address the pain points and e-Learning needs of an otherwise ignored chunk of learners who also equally deserve modern education. 

Another great PLUS is that you get a chance to tap into a newer and more profitable segment of e-Learning prospects. And nothing is as effective as a business for a meaningful cause!  

The success stories are right in front of you. 

Global front-runners in the digital technology sector such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have increasingly focused on making their technology products and services more accessible for all including people with disabilities. They have accessible solutions for all users. And that’s what makes them the best at what they do.

Making Digital Technology More Accessible

Now let’s answer the next logical question! How do you make digital technology in education more accessible? 

Inclusion is the key here. Simply put, make your software products/offerings digitally inclusive and friendly to use across all sections of your user-base irrespective of their physical abilities, skills, knowledge or expertise.  

If you focus on providing inclusive learning technology to your students, the rest follows suit! Naturally, as part of the next steps, you’re gravitated to make the next move where you work towards making the product more accessible and user-friendly. You get the idea! 

By inclusion I mean – to be able to accommodate all kinds of students and help them learn effectively without any technological and usability barriers

For instance – imagine something like a text-to-speech feature to help students with hearing disabilities access reading materials online. How simple would life be if you reduced the load on your learners to figure out and use new learning technologies!

Improved Accessibility in Moodle with Edwiser RemUI

We, at Edwiser, also believe in integrating accessible e-Learning technology with Moodle as an integral part of this quest. To support the accessibility guidelines of WCAG, Edwiser RemUI has undergone another crucial upgrade. 

The updated version of the Edwiser RemUI theme is meticulously built to provide equal functionality and seamless user experience to ALL Moodle users. This means our theme has been improved to now operate with minimal interaction barriers for all Moodlers regardless of disabilities. 

The FIRST Accessibility Update of Edwiser RemUI 

Talking about the latest update! We’re proud to finally have taken the initiative for making our theme for Moodle more accessible.

We have made the Edwiser RemUI theme compliant with WCAG standards

As part of the initial release, the update intends to support only the student user role exclusively on the following Moodle pages: Login Page, Dashboard, Course Archive and Course Page

Our motive is to help students navigate the layout completely using the keyboard. You can use the ‘tab’ button on the keyboard to navigate between different elements on the supported pages.

There’s good news for differently-abled students too. For students with full or partial blindness disability, we have also incorporated the text/element to voice on elements using screen reader tools.

Edwiser RemUI enables you to use browser tools such as ChromeVox Classic Extension for effortless screen reading. 

Please note: We are going to further improve on this in the upcoming versions of the theme. This version is just an initial release in the direction where we aim to have our theme fully accessible for every single Moodle user.

Moodle’s Mantra for Success – An Open Secret

Have you ever thought about why Moodle is so robust and highly preferred? 

The answer is simple! 

It’s because the Moodle community constantly works towards improving its functionality, and accessibility for the benefit of all users – be it normal users, differently-abled users, students, teachers as well as admins, without any discrimination!

The ever-evolving code of Moodle is a solid testimony to its highly-accessible and inclusive design. There’s a reason why it’s one of the most popular open-source LMS – It’s easy to embrace, as simple as that!

So, the mantra to stay on top of your game is to transform with changing times and needs, be consistently relevant and upgrade the ease-of-use and accessibility aspects of your technology to resonate with your audience at all times.

Final Thoughts 

Moodle is the primary source of inspiration for us

And if Moodle is easily accessible to all, why not make an effort to create an equally accessible theme for Moodle? 

We’ve done the hard work and our updated theme is available for you to get started with accessible and inclusive e-Learning! 

You can explore Edwiser RemUI right away!

If you already own a license then you can navigate to the ‘My Account’ page to download and install the latest version. 

Note: The support is available for users using Moodle 3.7 and above

And, this is just the beginning! 

Stay with us as we will be rolling out more advanced accessibility updates in the future.

What do you think about this update? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below

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