When meetings and events are held remotely, digital accessibility is important to ensure that all attendees, including people with disabilities, are able to participate and engage with content at the same time, with the same ease of use.
With a little pre-planning, event hosts can structure an inclusive and functional environment for all participants.
We have quickly grown accustomed to remote meetings, but are they—maybe unintentionally—excluding participants with disabilities? A panel of experts from Harvard's Digital Accessibility Services (DAS) team discusses best practices, tips, and answers questions. This event is part of a series to commemorate the 75th observance of National Disability Employment Awareness Month, as well as the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Download the slides (PDF)
Zoom is the most widely used platform for web conferencing at Harvard, but others including Microsoft Teams are commonly used. Some suggestions throughout this page may be Zoom-specific, but most may be applied more generally across web conferencing platforms.
When sending your meeting invite, include a statement letting individuals know that they can request accommodations (such as ASL or captioning) for the meeting. For example: “Persons with disabilities who wish to request accommodations or who have questions about access, please contact [meeting sponsor’s email] in advance of the session.”
Event sponsors are expected to explore and seek to fulfill reasonable accommodations when requested by an individual. University Disability Resources (disabilityresources@harvard.edu) offers consultation if you have questions about the requests that you receive. Accessibility Vendors for hire are also listed on the University Disability Resources site.
If you are including an RSVP submission form with your event posting, ensure that the form is accessible, especially to users who might not be using a mouse, or who might be accessing the form on a mobile device. Learn more about creating accessible forms on the Digital Accessibility website:
Clearly label form fields
Use sufficient color contrast
Clearly indicate required fields
Provide helpful error messages
When sharing slides, videos, or audio content, it is recommended that any online materials be accessible, and made available ahead of time for attendees.
Sharing a copy of your slides in advance allows participants more direct control over their access to information (to magnify or invert colors as needed), rather than being held to the larger group experience, which may not be as accessible to them.
Learn how to create accessible materials by attending DAS’s Creating Accessible Documents course
Check out our collection of on-demand accessibility training videos: Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat PDF
Event sponsors may choose to provide live captions for their meeting when required or encouraged by the University, if they receive a request for captioning from an individual, or as an inclusive practice to make an event more accessible. There are two common practices for live-captioning an event: provide captions in-house, or hire a captioning vendor. Because of the complexity and difficulty involved in producing live captions, self-produced or in-house captioning generally does not meet accessibility requirements for accuracy. Therefore, it is recommended that a vendor be used to ensure accuracy of captions.
Zoom and Microsoft Teams offer automatically generated live captions for every meeting, and meeting hosts are encouraged to turn them on as an inclusive practice. While auto-generated captions do not meet the accuracy requirements of Harvard’s guidelines, they have several benefits as a live transcription service for meeting attendees. Live captions can aid with note taking, and they provide a searchable transcript, which makes it easy to review content after the meeting.
Learn more about live captions:
Harvard’s preferred live captioning vendor is Vitac. Learn more about pricing and getting started with VITAC (HarvardKey required).
Orient the conversation
If feasible, turn on your video and face the camera. Seeing the speaker helps participants maintain attention, and it can be helpful for anyone who is reading lips.
Encourage all attendees to identify themselves by name before speaking. This helps those who cannot see the other attendees’ video to follow along and participate in the conversation.
Describing visual content being displayed will help anyone with a vision or cognitive disability, as well as anyone who may be joining only by phone or with no video for any reason.
Keep in mind that expressions such as, “right here” or “here we see” or "in the upper-right" will not translate well to participants who cannot see the screen. Be descriptive and clear when you present materials.
Participants have a few options for asking questions in a web conferencing platform such as Zoom. They can raise their virtual hands and unmute themselves when called upon, or they can post questions directly in the chat window, to be answered whenever possible. It is recommended to allow for both methods, but to always repeat any questions posed in the chat. Repeating the questions helps anyone who can’t access the chat visually during the session, and it can even improve the accuracy and quality of captioning.
When using the chat feature, keep in mind that anyone using assistive technology may not be able to copy or activate the links. It is therefore recommended that you speak out the URL when posting it in chat. You may also consider emailing participants any resource links being shared either before or following the session, especially for very long URLs.
Zoom provides polling and whiteboard annotation features. However, these features are not yet fully accessible. Use these Zoom features carefully by clearly describing any interaction, and allowing opportunities for participants to express difficulties or barriers they may be experiencing. Plan for how you may share the poll or whiteboard information in a different way, and consider how to be descriptive in sharing visual elements, such as annotations that may be written on the whiteboard or polling results.
Before sending attendees into Breakout Rooms, prepare them for the experience by announcing how long the breakout session will last, and if the host will be joining any of the groups. Provide clear instructions about how to ask a question or seek help during a breakout session.
Note: If an attendee has requested live captioning, be sure to assign that attendee with the person who is typing the captions in the same breakout room.
Similar to the RSVP form, ensure that your event feedback form is accessible, especially to users who might not be using a mouse, or who might be accessing the form on a mobile device. Learn more about creating accessible forms on the Digital Accessibility website:
Clearly label form fields
Use sufficient color contrast
Clearly indicate required fields
Provide helpful error messages
If a video recording of a live event is posted to a public-facing Harvard website, the video must be posted with accurate captions provided as required by the Digital Accessibility Policy. Live captions don't meet the accuracy level required for post-production captioning, so the captions would need to be updated and corrected to include things like punctuation, speaker names, etc. You may update the captions yourself for accuracy or hire a vendor to provide accurate captions.
Vendors that may be hired for captioning pre-recorded audio or video:
3Play Media (Harvard Preferred Vendor)
