Zoom and Teams Meetings

Overview

This article describes settings and best practices to maximize the accessibility of your virtual meetings, including Zoom and Microsoft Teams meetings. Zoom provides better overall accessibility features than Teams, and is therefore generally recommended for virtual meetings, when possible.

Settings

Closed Captions

Automated captions are enabled by default for all UO Zoom and Teams accounts, and meeting participants choose whether they want to display them. Both systems allow users to toggle viewing closed captions on and off during a meeting, as well as a providing an account option to display captions by default when joining meetings.

If there is no option to view closed captions in a Zoom meeting, it means the meeting Host has inappropriately turned the feature off in their Zoom account settings. Changes to this setting do not take effect while a meeting is in progress - if they fix it, the meeting will need to be restarted to allow users to display captions.

Enable Transcripts

Many people can benefit from having a transcript of the meeting up to the current point, instead of just captions for the last few seconds of audio. Unless privacy reasons dictate otherwise, this option should be enabled.

For Zoom meetings, log in to the UO Zoom web portal, go to the Settings tab, and the Meeting sub-section, and turn on the "Full transcript" and "Save Captions" options. In addition, go to the Settings tab, and the Recording sub-section. Ensure that "Create audio transcript" and "Viewers can see the transcript" are both turned on.

Enable "Mute Participants Upon Entry" in Zoom

This feature, which ensures that people joining a meeting are automatically muted, reduces disruptions that disproportionately impact people with disabilities, including those with cognitive, attentional, and audio processing disabilities. This is especially impactful in large meetings or virtual classrooms, and in meetings where people may join at different times. Log in to the UO Zoom web portal, go to the Settings tab, and the Meeting sub-section, and turn on the "Mute all participants when they join a meeting" option.

Actions

Making visuals accessible

Screen-sharing, frequently used for giving presentations (e.g., displaying PowerPoint slides), to share documents, and to give demonstrations, is inherently inaccessible to people who are blind, as well as many people with low vision, reading impairments, and other disabilities. Assistive technologies, including screen readers, cannot interact with or provide any information about a shared screen. As a result, it's critical to describe important visuals (e.g., reading the content of PowerPoint slides and describing images), and to provide people in the meeting with direct access to documents and presentation files, so that they can open and interact with them with them.

Provide materials in advance

When providing presentation materials or documents that will be reviewed during the meeting, send them out in advance, so that people have time to review them before the meeting. This is especially critical for people who need more time to review the materials (including people who use assistive technologies) or who cannot divide their attention between the materials and the conversation in the meeting.

Limit use of chat

Chat messages can be distracting for people trying to pay attention in a meeting or contribute to a conversation, and can easily be missed. This is particularly problematic for many disabled people. For example, screen reader users get interrupted by audio notifications of chat messages, and generally have to listen to chat messages while people are talking in the meeting. Additionally, people with cognitive disabilities, ADHD, and other attentional issues may not be able to maintain focus on the meeting if there are frequent chat interruptions. Some people may also have to ignore chat notifications to stay focused on the meeting, or will not notice chat messages, and may therefore miss information if it is only provided in chat.

As a result, chat usage should be limited during meetings. A few important best practices:

  • Read out important chat messages, and state who sent them. If you are verbally answering a question asked in chat, read the question out loud first.
  • If you're sharing a link or other important information in chat, announce that you are doing so verbally (ideally, before you send the message).
  • If you're asking people to provide written responses in chat, pause while they do so.
  • Don't have side conversations in chat during meetings.
  • If you're running the meeting.