Making On-line Meetings and Presentations Accessible

Online meetings have become a regular way for communities to gather, make decisions, and reach people across long distances. A meeting can be open to some participants and closed to others, and the difference often comes from the host’s plans. Blind participants who use screen readers, software that reads on screen text aloud or sends it to a Braille display, receive only what the meeting delivers as speech or text.

This article covers how to run a live online meeting and how to design a presentation so that Blind participants take part on the same terms as everyone else. The guide to planning welcoming, accessible gatherings covers the wider work of planning an event.

Platforms differ in accessibility, and Zoom is one of the more accessible platforms in common use. Zoom’s accessibility page states that its products work with screen readers and can be controlled by keyboard, and a 2022 letter from the National Federation of the Blind agrees that most popular video conferencing services are generally accessible. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which develops web standards, published Accessibility of Remote Meetings in July 2022 as a Group Note, which is guidance and not a standard. It asks hosts to confirm that the platform was chosen with accessibility in mind and to learn its accessibility features before the meeting, including how to turn on captions and how to reach the main functions by keyboard. The sections below draw on that guidance.

What a Shared Screen Withholds

A screen reader cannot read a shared screen. What the host puts up reaches the participants who can see it and stops there. Mark A. Riccobono, president of the National Federation of the Blind, described the barrier in a 2023 letter to the Federal Communications Commission:

“There are key pieces of visual information that are submitted through screen sharing, staging presentations such as signs and white boards, and the physical description of speakers and participants that the blind, low vision, and deafblind do not get access to.” -Mark A. Riccobono, National Federation of the Blind, Comments to the FCC on Video Conferencing (6 September 2023)

The remedy belongs to the host and the presenter. When you share information on screen, read it aloud. If you share a phone number, read it aloud and repeat it, and also put it in the chat or send it to the group ahead of time. Describe what you show and what you do on screen, as the University of Virginia Library advises for Zoom, and send links and materials before the session.

Some platforms are narrowing the gap. In Microsoft Teams, when a presenter shares slides with PowerPoint Live, a screen reader user can browse the slides independently. Microsoft lists Windows Narrator, JAWS (Job Access With Speech), and NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access) as the screen readers it tested, in its guide to attending a PowerPoint Live session with a screen reader. Check what your own platform offers, and still send the files ahead.

Reading Slides in Turn Leaves Blind Participants Out

Many hosts bring a slide deck and ask participants to take turns reading a slide aloud. The activity is meant to include people. A Blind participant cannot read a slide that appears only on a shared screen, so the activity gives every other participant a part and gives that participant none.

Planning removes this barrier. When every participant already holds the materials in a format that participant can use, taking turns works for the whole group, whether or not the shared screen reaches each person.

Send Accessible Materials Ahead of Time

The W3C guidance asks hosts to give participants the actual files, ideally before the meeting, and says screen sharing should not be the only way to receive materials. It asks that slides and documents be prepared to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA or higher.

Send everything the meeting uses, not only the slides: handouts, readings, links, forms, polls, and any document that comes up during the discussion. Send it in the order the meeting will follow, so that every participant can be on the same item at the same moment. Participants who plan to share a document send the host an accessible copy before the meeting starts, so that the host can pass it to participants who want it.

Do not assume that everyone has the software to open your slide show, and do not ask participants to run unfamiliar software while they follow the meeting. An accessible Word or PDF file, a plain text version, Braille, or large print may each be the right format for a different participant.

Ask Blind Participants What an Accessible Copy Looks Like

The format belongs to the participant who will use it. One Blind participant may prefer a Word file, another a PDF, another Braille, and preferences change from one meeting to the next. Ask privately and early, and ask again. The guide to making materials accessible to Blind participants explains the questions to ask and how to produce each format.

The Bahá’í International Community told the United Nations in 1988:

“[W]e all have much to learn from the disabled persons.” -The Bahá’í International Community, Human Rights and Disability (6 August 1988)

Take Turns Speaking in Ways Every Participant Can Use

A hand raised on camera reaches only the participants who can see it. Zoom has a Raise Hand control with a keyboard shortcut: Alt and Y on Windows, and Option and Y on a Mac, according to the University of Washington list of Zoom keyboard shortcuts. Tell participants about the control at the start of the meeting.

Offer a second way when a control does not work for someone. W3C asks hosts to provide another way to manage turn taking if a hand raising control cannot be used with a keyboard or access technology, and the University of Colorado Boulder suggests telling participants that they can post a question in the chat if they cannot use Raise Hand.

Say who is speaking. Not every participant can see the screen, so the host names the person being recognized. The University of California, Irvine advises announcing who is speaking and reading the participant names aloud at the start of the meeting, because the participant list is cumbersome to navigate with a screen reader. Participants add to this by saying their own name before they speak, for example, “Mike: I agree with what Renee said earlier,” or “Yolanda: I was thinking of a different approach we could take.”

Design One Meeting That Does Not Make Anyone Other

A design that leaves someone out tells that person, in effect, that the event was not made for them. That is otherness, and a meeting built around a shared screen creates it for Blind participants without anyone intending it. The Social Model of Disability locates the barrier in that design and not in the participant, which makes removing it the work of the people who plan the meeting.

Inclusive design plans for the full range of participants from the beginning. Build one meeting: the same content, in the same order, at the same time, with each participant receiving it in the format that works for that person. Do not build one version for sighted participants, another for Blind participants, and another for Deaf participants. A single design that follows the accessibility guidelines removes the dividing line, because every participant is part of the same meeting.

The Universal House of Justice ties justice to participation:

“Justice demands universal participation. Thus, while social action may involve the provision of goods and services in some form, its primary concern must be to build capacity within a given population to participate in creating a better world.” -The Universal House of Justice, Riḍván 2010 Message

Call on participants equally. The University of Virginia Library notes that the Raise Hand feature gives everyone a chance to be called on.

Other Parts of an Accessible Meeting

• Captions give Deaf and hard of hearing participants the spoken words. W3C asks hosts to provide captions, and to turn on automated captions when no professional captioning service is available. A platform can offer captions while the host forgets to turn them on, so learn the setting before the meeting.
• Sign language interpreters give Deaf participants who use sign language access to the meeting. Arrange one where the meeting calls for it. The guide to American Sign Language interpreters and captioning services lists where to start.
• Audio Description gives Blind and Low Vision participants the visual information in any video you show. The guide to Audio Description in video explains how to find it, ask for it, and make it.
• Chat competes with the speaker for Blind participants, because a screen reader can read incoming messages aloud over the speaker. The article on side conversations in the chat during online conferences shows how a host can reduce them.
• Meeting notes in an accessible format belong with the materials. W3C asks hosts to create accessible meeting notes and share them before or after the meeting.
• Hybrid meetings bring some participants into a room and others online. W3C asks that audio, video, and materials not reach only one of the two groups, and that someone with a microphone repeat anything said by a person who does not have one.

Watch and Read More

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative published this video on making videos and remote sessions accessible.

Read the sections of the W3C Group Note that match your role:

• Hosting accessible remote meetings
• Participating in accessible remote meetings
• Holding accessible hybrid meetings

Questions for Reflection

1. At our last online meeting, what appeared on a shared screen, and how did each Blind participant receive that same information, in what form, and before or during the meeting?
2. When people take turns speaking at our online meetings, how does each Blind participant know who is speaking and when to speak, and what do we do when the raise hand control does not work for someone?
3. Which of our online meetings have asked participants to take turns reading slides aloud, and what could we have sent ahead of time so that no one’s part depended on seeing the screen?
4. Who decides which materials go out before each online meeting, who checks that the files are accessible, and does the list include every handout, link, poll, and document used during the meeting, not only the slides?
5. Who chooses the platform and settings for our online meetings, including captions and sign language interpreters, and which Blind and Deaf participants took part in that choice?
6. Whose voices are missing from our online meetings, what have we asked them about the way we run those meetings, and what changed because of their answers?