Tale of a Reluctant Web Conferencing Solution User
During the upcoming Sakai Virtual Conference on Thursday, November 12, I will be presenting a lightning talk titled “A11Y Experiment” to highlight an exciting, immersive project with Learning Experiences and Sakai that I first referenced in my September 26 blog post.
You’re probably wondering what this has to do with my experience using web conferencing solutions, and don’t worry, I’m about to get to that.
Chris sporting a Sakai Virtual Conference 2020 T-Shirt.
For the title of this post, I thought it would be fitting to take some creative liberty with altering the name of my blog, because I truly believe this is how I, and most other blind/low vision users feel about the various web conferencing solutions that are out there.
Like it or not, by default we are reluctant users of these web conferencing tools, not because we are opposed to these sorts of interactive, collaborative technologies, but because for us these platforms tend to be overkill. Think about it, we mostly just need to be able to patch into the audio portion of these sessions, the video feed, screen share, and other features are really there for sighted users. I know that this is an oversimplification, and I usually try to avoid these blanket generalizations since I recognize that even us blind and low-vision users still need to know how to use these technologies to host our own meetings, share slides, etc. but trust me when I say that most of us would be perfectly content with conference calls as opposed to web conferences. Don’t take this the wrong way, but we really don’t need to see the document you are talking through, or the faces of the other participants, because, well, because we can’t see them anyways.
That being said, the reality is that these web conferencing tools are here to stay, and over the long term I think these technologies will prove to be invaluable for individuals with disabilities, once the newness of everything wears off and there is more universal support for assistive technology.
In the interim, I thought I would share an example of what a typical experience with a web conferencing solution looks like for someone like me.
Sakai Virtual Conference
Recall that we started this blog with me talking about my preparations for the upcoming Sakai Virtual Conference.
What’s the Sakai Virtual Conference you ask?
With an emphasis on pedagogy and best practices, this faculty-friendly event is targeted toward the teaching and learning aspects of using Sakai, but technical topics will also be covered. Faculty, Instructional Designers, Administrators and Technical Staff are all encouraged to attend. Anyone interested in interacting and networking with members of the Sakai Community can register for the event here.
As the name would imply, The Sakai Virtual Conference will be 100% online. The conference will be hosted on a special instance of TrySakai while the plan is to use Zoom to facilitate the various virtual panel discussions.
Now normally this wouldn’t be a big deal. I imagine that most sighted people probably don’t think twice about the logistics of a completely online format, they register for the event, and I’m guessing that’s it until they go to log in on the day of the conference.
But I don’t have that luxury, as a blind user I know that my reliance on assistive technology means that I just can’t leave things to chance. moreover, as someone slated to be one of the presenters for the Sakai Virtual Conference, I needed that extra assurance that I will actually be able to hold up my end of the bargain, so I set about my work to determine whether the specific solutions being proposed were ones that I could actually access and utilize.
Well, I have used Zoom on multiple occasions in the past, and for the most part, I am able to manage and get the tool to do what I need it to do. My concerns focused more on the actual meeting link, since I have experienced problems in the past with Zoom invites that had been shared with me, and I didn’t want to find out the hard way on the day of the conference that I couldn’t join my session, so I definitely planned on testing out the link to make sure it was working properly. Also, the fact that everything was going to be hosted on the TrySakai site made me a little anxious, but not because of anything to do with Sakai, just that this would add an extra layer of complexity that I would need to account for.
Fortunate for me, the Sakai Community was on top of things…
First, I attended a super informative presenter orientation over Zoom, and luckily everything seemed pretty straightforward. That being said, when Martin Ramsay from the LAMP Learning Consortium, the designated moderator for the lightning talks reached out to all of us presenters and offered to do test runs on Zoom for anyone who was interested, I decided to take him up on his offer, just to make sure everything was working properly.
So, last Thursday at 9 a.m., when my video and audio finally connected to the Zoom test session that had been set up for us, I was greeted by an enthusiastic, and I sensed, almost relieved Martin.
“Good morning Chris,” Martin said cheerfully, confirming that he could now see and hear me through his computer, triumphantly and correctly concluding that I must have been able to get the Zoom meeting link to work with my screen reader, since the two of us were now carrying on this virtual conversation.
Martin and I spent the next half hour or so talking through the logistics of the session. We checked the audio quality of the new headset I was using, and adjusted the tilt of the webcam on my lap-top so I could make sure my face was in frame. We even switched on and played around with the Otter live auto-captioning software that will be used for all of this year’s Sakai Virtual Conference sessions, which I hope to talk more about in a future blog post.
We also talked through some contingencies for what we would do if something didn’t go as planned, a practice that as a user of assistive technology, I have gotten in the habit of doing as part of my normal prep.
After we had sufficiently run through things and got to know each other a bit, we felt good about our session and decided to sign off.
In addition to the presenter orientation session, and my one-on-one test run with Martin, yet another, extremely helpful thing that the conference organizers did was send out links in advance for presenters to access the conference web site and materials, so that attendees can make sure they are able to log in and access everything before the conference goes live on Thursday.
As a result of all of this pre-work, the attention to detail, the lengths that the conference organizers went to for making us participants feel at home in this virtual environment, I can honestly say, as an accessibility consultant whose job it is to fret about these sorts of things, this is probably the most prepared that I have ever felt leading up to one of these type sessions.
Does this guarantee everything will go off without a hitch? No. Is there still a chance that I will experience some unforeseen problem with my assistive technology? Sure.
While the above Sakai Virtual Conference preparations were included as an example of a “best case” scenario, for blind/low vision users, a lot of times their interactions with web conferencing solutions can be far less predictable, and potentially, much more problematic.
The New Frontier
Prior to the current COVID health crisis, my exposure to web conferencing solutions was rather limited.
Back when I was serving as the IT & Media Talent Director for the Workforce Development Agency at the State of Michigan, I was overseeing a Veterans training initiative with Cisco and we would occasionally use their WebEx platform to host our virtual meetings/presentations. But usually it was someone from Cisco setting up the meeting and handling the controls, so all that I really had to do is figure out how to join the session.
Similarly, I have really only used Skype one time I can remember, it was a few years back when I had to do a virtual interview with a well-known, national consulting firm and it was not a pleasant experience. I wasn’t familiar enough with the tool, and was worried that my inexperience using the different features was going to reflect poorly on me as a candidate, as I had not disclosed to this prospective employer that I had a visual disability. And this was after I had done all of my prep, including setting up a practice session with my brother-in-law to familiarize myself with the Skype interface. Of course it probably didn’t help that my father-in-law showed up unannounced to our house in the middle of my interview, blew right by the “please do not knock – web conference in session” sign that I had taped to our front door, and walked right into the background of my video feed and stood there like one of those curious bystanders lurking behind a cable news correspondent doing a live report (the only thing that would have made it better is if he was holding one of those “John 3:16” signs, you know, like the people you see in the stands at sporting events.)
Of course, everything changed once things shut down this past March due to the COVID pandemic.
It wasn’t like these tools weren’t being used before COVID, but once everyone found themselves in lock down, Zoom, Google Meet, MS Teams and the like instantly became everyone’s preferred method to connect. And for most blind/low vision users like myself, the learning curve was steep and immediate.
Literally overnight, my clients pivoted to hosting virtual meetings on Zoom or Google Meet, so I had to figure out a way to adapt, too.
Initially, my biggest challenge was just trying to figure out how to use these technologies for the first time, each new web conferencing solution represented a new set of problems to solve, a new interface to figure out and familiarize myself with. And as you will find out, the accessibility of these systems varies drastically from one solution to the other, so those early days consisted of a lot of trial and error, frustration and temporary work arounds.
I think about those first few Google Meet sessions, when I couldn’t figure out how to get the system to pick up the built-in microphone on my ear buds. So instead, I would have to unplug and use the computer’s integrated audio components, which consisted of me repeatedly muzzling JAWS every time it would start to talk in the background, so I wouldn’t be a distraction to the other meeting attendees.
I think about my first time using BigBlueButton, the web conferencing solution used by the Sakai Community and Apereo Foundation, and how it probably took me a half dozen meetings to figure out how to close other browsing sessions without accidentally logging myself out of BigBlueButton (at least I got really good at completing the steps to log back in)!
I think about another experience I had as a member of the SEMCOG Regional Economic Development Task Force. During a recent session when I was trying to use the Zoom chat feature to send a message to one of the meeting’s hosts, I found that I could select the intended recipient of my message, type my message into the “live chat” field, but there didn’t seem to be a clear way for me to submit my message. And when it finally did go through, seemingly on its own, it cut off part of my message, so I had to figure out where it had left off, and send a second message to complete what it was that I was trying to say.
It made me think about the recent Christian Science Monitor story I referenced in my November 6 post on our Accessiversity Facebook page, about how the shift to remote work is creating opportunities for people with disabilities.
And finally, it made me think about all of the other blind and low-vision users out there, and what web conferencing solutions seem to work best for them, and why.
Be sure to check out the next installment of the blog to find out what we learned when we surveyed a group of blind and low-vision users…