There are currently many conferencing solutions in use today for remote learning, working, events, and other activities. Expanding from the theme in the previous section of this guide, although these conferencing solutions may look similar visually, there are many differences from an accessibility and equity standpoint.

General Features Provided by Zoom that makes it the Recommended Conferencing Solution

We recommend using Zoom, as it has really strong accessibility. It's not perfect, but the company has demonstrated a strong commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

Zoom makes almost all of its functionality available via the keyboard. Controls are also spoken and properly described when navigating through the content with a screen reader.
Zoom allows for a CART transcriber to provide human typed captions, ASL interpreter, and automatic captions provided by the computer.
Zoom provides good color contrast for its controls and provides facilities for changing attributes such as font size in chat as well as other parts of the interface.

Videos

Video 1

In this video, we will provide practical advice on navigating Zoom using only the keyboard. We will also mention keyboard shortcuts that provide a way to accomplish common tasks quickly, such as muting or unmuting audio and enabling or disabling your camera.

Video 2

Zoom polls are an effective and inclusive way to facilitate audience participation in a meeting or presentation. In this video, we will demonstrate the ways in which Zoom polls are operated with assistive technologies.

Video 3

In this video, we explore the Zoom settings, paying extra attention to those settings which pertain to accessibility. One important accessibility option is the ability to customize the verbosity of screen reader alerts, which include things such as a participant entering/leaving a meeting or a new chat. Expanding from the first video, we demonstrate the settings for keyboard shortcuts, which allows the user to assign a preference for performing almost all tasks in Zoom. Users can also change the size of captions and the messages in the chat display area.