Accommodation Options in Zoom Meeting and Webinar

Many times Zoom hosts will be asked to provide some sort of accommodation for meeting and webinar attendees. Even if not asked many tools can be utilized to offer a better experience for your participants.  Below are some of the more common offerings that can be provided to make participating in your meeting or webinar accessible.

1.  ASL (American Sign Language) interpreters:  This option would provide a live person to interpret anything said in the meeting or webinar in ASL.  The interpreter would be placed to the back of or to the side of the primary camera focus, or would be "spotlighted" by the Zoom host, so that they are continually seen.  This service option would be provided by an individual or organization, arranged by the University, trained for this purpose.  Some suggestions to offer the best experience are below:

  • This option is best applied when speakers are fully visible by the audience members.  If the presentation includes a considerable amount of shared screen time, it will minimize the interpreter to a point where some may find it difficult to see what is being said.  If much of your presentation will involve screen sharing, then it might be advisable to also consider option 2 below.
  • If your presentation will be over 20 or 30 minutes, then a second interpreter will be needed to switch off with the first interpreter.  Guides on duration can be discussed with the organization providing the service.
  • If the presentation will be live, and there is one speaker, then a location to the side of the speaker should be mapped out ahead of time, so that both individuals are always in frame.  Make sure to test the camera fully to make sure the interpreter is visible and well lit.  If there are multiple speakers, the interpreter should be assigned their own camera that an be set to spotlight during the presentation.

2.  Closed Captioning:  This feature allows the meeting or webinar host to assign the task of typing what is said in the meeting or webinar, so that it shows up for attendees as captions.  This is preformed either by a person (performing a task similar to a stenographer) or a certified third party software.  The function being performed by a person is the most common.  Caption currently are:

1. The host will have the option to assign someone in the meeting/webinar as the captioner, or to type things out themselves. 2. Certain software can be provided by captioning vendors. This provides a unique token that is copied into the software so they can access your meeting. This is currently not a very commonly used option for this service. 3. Zoom can provide AI based automatic transcription for attendees of a meeting or webinar. The AI software performs this function adequately, however mistakes can be shown during the meeting or webinar based on multiple factors.

***Note:  Auto-Transcription is not an acceptable solution to an accommodation request.  It is offered as a convenience to attendees.***

3.  Auto-Transcript:  Zoom meetings and webinars that are set to be recorded will engage in auto-captioning during processing, even if the feature wasn't selected during the live presentation.  Like the live auto-transcription feature, this process can create errors in the transcription.  Hosts should review all transcriptions in Zoom and manually fix any mistakes that are found before distribution of the recording.

For information on how to schedule people from agencies to perform some of this work please use the following contact information:

1.  For student support contact CASA at 508-626-4627 or at disabilityservices@framingham.edu
2.  For employee support contact the Office of Human Resources at 508-626-4052 or at humanresources@framingham.edu

 

 

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