If you have hearing problems, it is now much easier to join a Microsoft Teams meeting. Microsoft has launched a sign language perspective that allows deaf or hard-of-hearing persons, as well as their translators, to prioritise one another during meetings. Those video streams will stay in the same places, at sizes big enough to see sign language. Throughout a meeting, you may view up to two more signers, and the video will remain huge even when slides or screen sharing are displayed.
According to Microsoft, the view also makes options “sticky” owing to a new accessibility settings pane. Every time a Teams call begins, you won’t have to bother about pinning interpreters or activating captions. Instead of mulling over alternatives, you may get right into a meeting.
The sign language view and accessibility pane are presently only available via a user-by-user Public Preview. According to Microsoft, these will be available to all business and government clients in the “coming weeks.” It may take some time for everyone to be able to use the capability. Nonetheless, this promises to considerably simplify meetings for anybody with restricted hearing — and may make Teams more feasible if alternatives like Zoom (which only recently gained translator support) aren’t up to the task.
