OK so I decided to write this guide because of my frustration with leftist spaces switching to random video conferencing platforms without adequate consideration of accessibility. But I think it might be helpful to a broader audience as well. There are a ton of different communication related access needs that impact whether a particular tool will be widely accessible or not. Of course there’s no such thing as universal accessibility but one can aim towards having a space that is more widely accessible than not.

So in this guide I’ll first go through a list of communication related accessibility considerations to keep in mind when evaluating different options for your video calls or webinars etc. Mostly focus on things that I have personal experience with needing but will add some items that I may not use myself but I have some knowledge off. After  that in part two of this guide, I will be discussing some common platforms in light of these considerations and how well they measure up.

Accessibility considerations for video conferencing

Here are some things to keep in mind when choosing a platform for your video chat or webinar etc. For each item, I will be providing a short discussion of important points related to that issue.

Technical considerations

The first set of considerations is regarding the choice of a video conferencing platform from a technical perspective.

Automated captions:

At this point, I think a lot of people are familiar with Automated captions on various video platforms. These can be and essential need for people with several different types of disabilities including hard of hearing folks, folks with auditory processing issues, folks with learning disabilities and others. Many video platforms now offer demand side automated captions where the person who needs them can just turn them on on their end and the host does not have to do any additional set up. I personally consider this and essential feature to ensure widespread accessibility for events directed towards a general audience rather than for example small private events where you know for a fact that no one needs these. So I would personally recommend only using platforms that have automated captions. This is pretty easy as this feature is quite common. One last point about this feature is that while automated captions are great and an essential accessibility feature for many disabled people, they are not a replacement for CART(human generated captions). People have different access needs and for some people automated captions meet there needs and for others they don’t. Always respect people’s knowledge of their own access needs and don’t assume that if somebody is requesting CART that automated captions will do.

CART captions:

These captions are written live by a human using a short hand like system with software that translates it into regular Text. This is usually a paid service provided by various companies. But importantly, some video conferencing platforms have the capability for CART captions to be displayed directly in the video conferencing platform similar to how automated captions are displayed. On other platforms, there is no direct way to connect CART captions to the actual video displayed in that platform. Instead, there are third-party services like stream text which display CART captions in a browser window which the user has to look at separately from the video feed. Some users prefer this while others prefer the captions embedded into the video on the video conference platform. One big consideration for this is that stream Text can be really difficult to use on mobile devices which don’t allow multiple apps to be open at the same time and so the user has to switch back-and-forth between the video and the captions. For things like presentations, this can make it very difficult or even impossible to use on mobile devices. And for events without presentations, it can still be unpleasant to look at essentially a ticker tape of text in a browser window while listening to the video in the background. But again people who use CART have different preferences on what works for them. It’s always best to discuss the available options with the person who needs the CART captions to understand which options would meet their needs.

Screen reader compatibility:

Folks with various disabilities use screen readers to interact with digital spaces. But for something to actually work with the screen reader, it does need to be coded properly on the backend so things are tagged properly for the screen reader to read out. Sometimes folks think that things that are in text for example are automatically readable by a screen reader. This is not the case. It really depends on the actual formatting on the backend. For example, sometimes icons will have texting them but the icon is not actually Text it’s just an image with some text in it and that image is not tagged properly so screen reader will just say something like a button. Because it’s just labelled as a button and nothing else. So if you have five different things on a page called button you have no idea what it is if you’re using a screen reader. Additionally, there are several different screen readers depending on the device you’re using. Most smart phones have screen readers built in with the operating system. And on laptops and desktops, there’s usually third-party software that can connect as a screen reader as well. Just because app platform works with one screen reader does not mean it may work with all of them. This is especially true for screen readers on mobile devices for screen readers on laptop/desktop. Regardless though, some platforms offer far more screen reader compatibility than others. So this is very important to check when choosing a platform because without this, many digital tools are just completely inaccessible to many visually impaired people.

Mobile device compatibility:

A lot of disabled people use mobile devices as primary computing devices because of various accessibility features. So think about whether the platform you’re choosing works well on mobile devices or not. This can also depend on On the format of the event you’re hosting. For example, if your event requires someone to open up a file in another browser window or application to participate in the event, consider that many mobile devices don’t work well with having to have multiple apps or browser windows open at once and it’s some cases don’t allow it at all. There is a proliferation of video conferencing platforms these days including some that are completely browser based for mobile devices and these browser or based options may not work well for situations that requires someone to have multiple windows open for example. In my experience many of these platforms also don’t necessarily work well with with other accessibility tools on mobile devices because device accessibility settings don’t always pass through to webpages the way they do too native apps.

Car mode availability:

Many video conferencing platforms these days offer something called the car mode or travel mode or on the go mode. Well this is not something that may commonly be bought off as an accessibility tool, it can be an extremely useful option because it offers a simple interface that can work well with accessibility tools. For example, several platforms that offer this option provide a large mute/un mute button and sometimes a hand raise button. I use this feature regularly because I usually have my screen reader turned off during video calls to avoid having to constantly hear two streams of audio which doesn’t work well with my auditory processing issues. Without the screen reader, it’s very difficult for me to know where the mute/un mute button is or even if I know where it is to be able to press it because these are often very small. Because of my specific visual impairment, I navigate video conferencing tools with a combination of sight and screen reader technology and the large mute/unmute button makes it much much easier to participate in video conferencing then having to do something complicated like turning my screen reader on justifying the mute/unmute button and then turning it off again repeatedly to be able to participate. Other folks with low vision and other disabilities may also find this feature very helpful. One thing to note about this kind of feature is that it tends to automatically turn off the participants camera. Which is not an issue but just something to keep in mind.

Entering passwords and one click join links:

There is a bunch of variance in the process for entering/joining a video conferencing meeting. Some platforms have an option for participants to enter passwords to enter the meeting. Many organizations use this option for security reasons. These platforms also often provide a way to embed the password in the the join link itself so it does not have to be entered separately. I highly highly recommend this as a standard practice for accessibility because separately entering a password can be very difficult when using certain accessibility tools. For example, voice typing a random string of letters and numbers can be nearly impossible. Additionally, voice type tools can sometimes in and worse than that, Many password fields do not allow entering anything with voice type at all. Whenever I run into this issue before people always told me to just copy and paste the password. Copying and pasting things with Voice command and screen reader accessibility tools among others can also be extremely difficult or impossible and some platforms also are not very friendly to people pasting in passwords. All of this can be avoided by enabling one click join links that have the password embedded in them which makes the joining process accessible without compromising security.

Phone dial in options:

Many video conference and platforms also offer a way to join by phone instead of through a computer or smart phone. This can be an important accessibility feature for many people but one that is often not used by various organizations. Platforms that offer a Phone dial in option usually generate Phone dial in information for every meeting but in my experience, this information is usually not included in the meeting information sent to participants. I’m not sure if this happens because people think a video conferencing platforms as primarily about video and therefore don’t think about the phone dialling option is being relevant. However, for many disabled folks this may be the primary way they participate in group meetings. Usage of this option is common among the Blind/low vision/Visually impaired community and I have also encountered it being used by folks for whom Internet service is not affordable but they have access to a phone plan. One thing to note with this option is that participants names do not show up in the meeting list but rather drunk versions of their phone numbers. However, the host can usually rename the participants if needed. Additionally, while there are controls like mute/unmute available via and bring specific codes on the phone, it is often more accessible for someone to use their phones mute/unmute feature which will not show up as muted on the call. So it may look like someone is not following The muting policy for the event when they really are.

Large text compatibility:

In my experience, this issue can be somewhat less obvious than others. One assumption I run into a lot by sighted folks is that all visually impaired people use screen readers. This is not accurate. Using large text is also a common accessibility tools that many of us use. Many apps and web-based platforms work well with this well many do not. Most computing platforms offer the option of setting up large text preferences which are then passed onto apps and browsers etc. But not all platforms actually use these settings or work well with them. In some cases the settings seem to be completely ignored by the platform. In other cases, the text is resized in a way that makes the platform unuseable because for example, some fields or buttons etc. may just go off the screen or there’s overlapping text which makes it impossible to read anything. Not sure if there is good documentation about this compatibility from the platform but this compatibility is relatively easy to check by just adjusting the large tech settings on your device and checking to make sure that it works well with whatever platform you’re choosing. One thing to note here is that even though sometimes things may work OK on a desktop they may not work well on a mobile device in this context so it’s best to check with various devices or search user forums or other online documentation about this topic.

Voice command compatibility:

A lot of disabled folks use various voice command tools to interact with computing devices including desktop and mobile devices. These tools rely on elements on the screen having labels/anchors that can be used by the voice commands to navigate. These labels are part of the coding of a particular platform and not something that a user can modify. Therefore for a video conferencing platform to be compatible with voice command tools, The elements shown on the screen have to be labelled correctly on the back end. In my experience,this is often not the case. Even with platforms that are generally good about labelling things,sometimes there are labels that are entirely missing or have gibberish labels that can be difficult to use with voice command. I don’t currently have a good handle on how somebody who doesn’t use voice command tools can evaluate whether a platform is voice command compatible. I’ll be making comments in the section evaluating various video conferencing platforms about my own experience using voice command tools on the devices I use with those platforms. But likely user forums are a good resource for understanding whether a particular platform is voice command friendly especially as things keep changing rapidly.

Policy and settings considerations

The second set of considerations is setting options and event policies that impact video conferencing accessibility. These are things that are not usually tech issue but an issue of choices made by the event organizer that can affect accessibility on many different platforms. These are mostly fixable by the event organizer just making a different choice but in my experience it’s difficult to get organizers to do so because people don’t often relate this kind of stuff to accessibility. So I’m going to try to explain a little bit why these things impact accessibility.

Text only Q&A and other audience participation:

For many events whether they are video meetings or webinars etc., Audience participation especially for things like talks is limited to asking questions using features like chat, Q&A tools built into the platform and in some cases external tools like SLIDO. The common thing for all these is that they’re all text based. Wen I have tried to reach out to organizer to let them know these are not things I can use during an event, I’ve gotten some unhelpful responses such as suggesting that I use email instead. In some cases folks suggested that I sent my questions ahead of time. This is baffling because I’m not sure how I’m supposed to know what questions to ask without actually attending the event of listening to the talk etc. Regardless, I’m going to explain why these options are not accessible. For text based options of any kind whether it’s the chat box or the Q&A feature or SLIDO or email, it requires the ability to type text in the middle of a video call. If someone is using voice control/voice type tools, this can be very difficult or impossible. Some voice type tools don’t work well at all when avideo call is in progress. These problems can manifest as a lack of accuracy in what is being typed or even that voice type is picking up the audio from speakers in the call rather than the person voice typing. Additionally, for those of us with auditory processing or other hearing related issues, trying to manage two audio screens at once can be incredibly difficult or impossible. In this case the two audio streams would be other people speaking on the call and oneself speaking for voice type. For those of us who may be visually impaired to end using voice type, checking the accuracy of voice type in the middle of a video call can also be incredibly difficult because this then requires having the screen reader on and having to listen to both the screen reader and people talking on the call at the same time. Finally, while people who are fluent in using a screen reader during video calls, typing questions in the chat can still be challenging because of the time it takes to manually type things while using a screen reader. For all these reasons and probably many more, having only text based options available for audience participation is not accessible. Having other options such as verbal participation options is essential to having accessible video calls. Sometimes when I bring this up, people act like this is a technology issue or security issue. People will bring up that allowing verbal participation will make it a free-for-all and there will be problems with moderation and trolling etc. However, several platforms provide tools to manage this issue. For example, a host can unmute specific people on a video call. This works even for a webinar mode where chat or Q&A features are primary interaction options, there are ways to allow specific users to be participating via voice for accessibility. Different platforms have different ways of enabling these features. And in some cases some platforms may not have these features in which case this can be a considering an option of which tool to use. But generally this is a policy issue of what choices organization is making in terms of who you are allowing to participate in your events and who is being locked out of participation entirely. I feel particularly strongly about this issue because this is often but one of the hardest to get organizers to agree to change their policy to make sure their event is accessible for people. This happens even even with organizations whose events are geared towards disabled people. My impression is that sometimes people don’t understand that this is a big deal especially for large events where lots of people are participating and so not all questions etc. To be answered. But by having these policies some people are being essentially completely locked out of participation in essential part of the event. If the Q&A or other live participation options were not essential to the event, then the event wouldn’t be any different than just posting a recording online. If an event is being held live and allowing life participation by audience members, then you need to make sure that entire groups of people are not being shut out.

Hand raising policy for audience participation:

Related to the previous point, even in meetings where verbal participation is an option, there can be barriers like requiring the use of the hand raises feature. Especially on mobile devices, this type of feature can often be buried behind several layers of menus. And these can be very difficult to navigate with various accessibility tools including screen readers and voice control tools. For example, sometimes many items are not labelled correctly so it may be difficult to figure out how to correctly navigate the menus with the screen reader or for the voice control to navigate properly. Additionally as with some of the items previously discussed, having to listen to a screen reader while in the middle of a video call can be very difficult for some folks. And tried to use voice control in the middle of a video call where other people are speaking can also be extremely difficult or impossible. I think in general the hands feature is a good tool and I’m not saying that this shouldn’t be used. However, having other options available is important for accessibility. One option that has worked well for me is to unmute myself but stay silent and wait for the host to call on me when it is my turn and then speak. Unmute myself is just an indicator to the host equivalent to a raised hand. Other times, depending on the meeting, I might unmute myself and quickly say something like “verbal hand raise”. However, both of these options I use can be a little nerve-wracking to bring up or jump into in the middle of a call where the Norm is for using the hands feature. It does require a certain amount of Social courage to speak up and ask for the stuff in a meeting. It is a much less anxiety causing experience if the hosts just offer this is an option directly. For example when announcing the group norms for participation, mentioning that if the hands feature is not accessible that folks can come off mute and wait to be called on to speak.

Camera on requirements:

A lot of spaces these days have a policy of requiring video cameras to be on during a meeting. This is not accessible to people with many different disabilities especially various types of Neuro divergences. When I bring up this topic, there is often a lot of pushback as many organizations see requiring cameras to be on as a safety/security measure.  But in my experience, a lot of  that is not thought through very well and falls in the realm of Security theatre rather than an actual effective security measure.

I have a lot to say about this  both in terms of  why this is an accessibility  issue and why requiring cameras on is not necessarily effective for safety anyway.  This is difficult to summarize so for an in-depth discussion of this topic, please check out my blog post here.

 What I’ll say here for now is that I recommend that organizations actually think through what they’re trying to achieve with this policy rather than just doing it as a default because it seems like a good idea. That way y’all can  consider alternative ways of achieving the same  thing  that are more accessible and might even be more effective. For example,  as a harm reduction measure, offering folks private breakout rooms to have their camera on briefly with a Facilitator to verify  whatever needs to be verified rather than forcing people to have their camera on in a large public  main room. I also discuss this kind of option in the blog post linked above.

Audiovisual content neurological symptom triggers:

This consideration is a little bit different from the others because it’s about the content of the meeting but it does have some interaction with technical aspects of the video conferencing platform. There are several audiovisual stimuli that can trigger neurological symptoms and other health issues for people with various disabilities. Some common triggers include flashing lights, rapidly changing images, loud sounds or sudden sounds. While there are some platforms that have features allow allowing participants to set automatic filters for some of these stimuli, the performance of these features is spotty at best and often there’s not enough information available about the criteria being used to filter the content. If you will have this kind of content during your meeting, make it a policy to have a contact warning and a pause before starting this content so people who may be negatively affected by the audiovisual triggers can minimize audio or look away or do whatever else is necessary to ensure their neurological and other symptoms don’t get triggered.

Leaving and re-entering meeting:

This is an issue that I rarely run into but it does come up. Some online meetings will only allow people to enter a meeting up to a certain time after the meeting start. If someone who entered the meeting at the beginning of the call but needs to leave and come back, they can be shut out of entering because the meeting has been closed too new participants for people entering at all. This can be a huge barrier to folks who need this step away from a meeting to meet there access needs or even just to do an important task. There seems to be an assumption that people can just leave themselves signed into a meeting and step away to do whatever they need. However, especially for those of us to use mobile devices, it is sometimes not feasible to do this. For example, I frequently attend online writing workshops where participants argument writing prompts and some time to work on those prompts before participating in group shares. As I’ve mentioned previously, voice type tends to really not work well well Wen is signed into a video meeting. During these workshops, I usually attend the first part of the meeting to get the writing prompt and then I sign out to actually work on the writing prompt using voice type and then sign back in when it is time to share. However in some instances I have been locked out of returning to the meeting because the host decided to close the meeting to people entering without prior announcement. There of course other reasons to step away as well such as for example if somebody signed it on a mobile device I need to answer an urgent phone call or deal with another situation that makes being signed into the video conferencing platform impractical. I understand that for events with limited capacity etc., this kind of policy is used to I forced that capacity. But consider having a process to ensure folks we need to step away can return. And at least announcing your policy ahead of time so folks can reach out and discuss this with you or otherwise plan accordingly.

Muting audio when calling in via phone:

This is a bit of a niche need but still an important one. As I mentioned in the section above regarding people dialling into participate in a meeting on the phone, while there are built-in features that many video conference and platforms have to allow participants to use the phone keypad to android Codes to mute or unmute themselves, that method is not accessible to everyone. Often, the Phone’s own mute/unmute microphone button is more accessible However, participants use this option, the meeting host won’t be able to see whether they’re muted or not. If your event has a policy requiring everyone to be on mute, Consider having Grace around this policy for people dialled in on the phone and if you don’t actually hear background noise from that participant, consider not doing something like muting them on your end which can make it difficult for them to unmute themselves if the platforms phone code unmute options is not accessible to them.

Waiting room messaging:

Some video conferencing platforms offer a feature that has a Waiting room when participants first login that has a chat feature for the house to message participants before allowing them into the meeting. As discussed in other sections above, chat messages are not accessible to everyone. Therefore, if you send out a message blast via chat in the waiting room, participants for whom chat is inaccessible will not receive it. In some instances, I’ve encountered the situation where hosts use this feature to verify information about people entering the meeting. That process is not accessible to everyone. If your event does require an extensive screening process, one option I have seen used as making your main room in the meeting the waiting room instead so people can interact verbally with the host as well. And then assign people to the relevant breakout rooms.

Event recording:

For a while in the last few years, it became standard practice for online events especially often educational nature to be recorded. However, recently I have noticed a trend that beer is organizations have stopped doing this. Having a way for people interested in the event to participate asynchronously can be an important accessibility feature. People living different time zones or having different sleep cycles or just not having spoons at the right time of day or planning to attend but not being able to because they had a health crash unexpectedly or even attending the event but having trouble following along because of brain fog and needing to engage with the content again to fully understand etc., are all common reasons for the need for having event recordings that people can interact with after the event. Recently I tried to attend two different conferences aimed at the Disability community that were all day events with around eight hours of programming. Many many disabled people do not have the spoons to attend an event this long. And because these events were geared towards disabled people, I assumed that they would be video recordings available after the event so even if I could only attend one or two sessions for each event, I could watch the rest later. This turned out to not be the case. Neither of these conferences recorded video of the various talks during the conference and for each conference I was only able to attend about one hour of programming out of the eight. Honestly I’m still not sure what the reasoning was behind not reporting these talks but it is still astounding to me that events geared towards disabled people assumed the ability of participants have spoons for a stretch of eight hours. Please do not do this. Of course there are types of events where recording them is not relevant. Here I am mainly talking about events like lectures or workshops etc. Where having the option for people too access the information later can be an important accessibility tool.

Asking about Access needs during event registration:

 As I hope is clear from several of the sections above.Many communication related access needs require Advance consideration to ensure proper set up before the event so that people can even enter the event. Therefore, it is best practice to ask people whether they have any Access Requests they’d like to make during the registration process itself. If you are using a registration form for the event, I highly recommend making this as a field in the form itself. I have noticed many organizations that have registration forms and may even have thought about asking people about about Access needs but force people too send an email to make access request. This place is an additional barrier especially in terms of  executive function, social anxiety and extra spoons required to ask for access when it is usually fairly easy to update a registration form to have a field that asks people about their access needs. This also signals to participants that this organization is at least thinking about about Access needs and willing to consider access requests.

 Additionally, allowing people to make access request during registration can also be helpful for organizers by providing as much advances notice as  possible for access requests to be considered  and  implemented.

Describe event format and access details on event page:

 This consideration is related to the last one. In order for people to know what Access requests to make, it is very useful to know details about the  format of the event and accessibility features that have already been thought of.  I highly recommend providing a detailed description on the event page of the agenda for the event and technical details such  as whether they will be presentation slides or not, whether there will be videos played,whether they’ll be a Q&A or other audience participation portion of the event, whether there will be breakout rooms, etc. Additionally,list accessibility  features that you already plan to offer such as  providing image descriptions,  ASL interpretation, chat being read out loud, whether there will be automated  captioning available or  CART captioning available, etc.

 Sharing this information upfront will also save time for the organizers because you won’t have to field multiple emails asking you about the  same thing or making the same access requests that you’ve already accounted for.