cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/7716703
Earlier this month I logged on to a Zoom webinar that had chat enabled. The meeting had a large attendance. The chat quickly filled up with dozens of people sharing their city or country, and later commenting on technical problems.
Some screen reader users had a difficult experience due to the heavy use of the chat. Here are three bits of feedback:
What is your opinion on this aspect of videoconference chat etiquette? I'm not talking about offensive or dangerous content--just the volume of content.
- Should frivolous chat messages be avoided, so that screen reader users don't miss important chat messages?
- Or is important that chat can be a chaotic free-for-all, to get the full Zoom experience?
- Does anyone have personal experience with this?
- Does anyone have a preferred etiquette guide that covers this?
Thumbnail image is an illustration of over a dozen empty word balloons, overlaid on each other in a chaotic mess. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
It's possible to go into accessibility settings of zoom and control what messages are, and are not, read out. It feels to me like if the chat is distracting you, you're responsible for turning it off. Both NVDA and Jaws have scripts available that will allow you to do that with a single hotkey.
Thanks for sharing. It sounds like all the technology is in place for people to use or hide the chat as needed.