New Scribe for Meetings Enhancements Make Online Presentations Even More Accessible
Since we released Scribe for Meetings out of public beta last month, we’ve continued to enhance its features. Now, online presentations are even more accessible to attendees with a diverse range of print disabilities.
Here’s an overview of the new features you’ll find in Scribe for Meetings.
DVR Mode gives you more control.
First, we know attendees need to be able to read slide presentations at their own pace. So, we added DVR mode (Dynamic Visual Representation). DVR Mode lets an attendee pause the live presentation, move to the previous or next slide, then rejoin the live presentation when ready.
With DVR mode, an attendee can even review the slides they already saw when screen sharing is inactive, or after the meeting is over.
New Read Aloud feature
We’ve developed a feature called Read Aloud. This feature helps those who aren’t comfortable with a full-featured screen reader. It also aids print disabled individuals who can’t effectively read print because of a physical, perceptual, developmental, cognitive, or learning disability.
While viewing a slide, either live or in DVR mode, an attendee can click a single button to have Scribe for Meetings read the slide aloud. While reading the slide aloud, Scribe for Meetings will also draw a box around each word as it is spoken, to make it easier for the attendee to follow along visually.
All print disabled individuals, from low-vision, to Dyslexic, to cognitive and learning challenged individuals will find benefit from the spoken and highlighted on-screen text.
We highly recommend the Microsoft Edge browser for this feature, because Edge offers outstanding voices in several languages, free of charge. However, as with all of Scribe for Meetings, this feature also works with all other major platforms and browsers, including mobile devices.
Scribe for Meetings honors attendee’s font and color settings.
To provide the most accessible viewing experience for attendees with all kinds of print disabilities, Scribe for Meetings now displays slides in a visual format that’s optimized for accessibility.
In particular, Scribe for Meetings will now honor the attendee’s font and color settings, including high-contrast and dark modes.
Attendees who need larger fonts can simply use their browser’s zoom feature. And blind attendees on touch-based devices can now take full advantage of their screen reader’s explore-by-touch features.
With this change, sighted attendees may notice that the slides displayed by Scribe for Meetings look quite different from the originals. But keep in mind that sighted attendees can always switch back to the Zoom meeting window to see the slides in their original appearance.
Scribe for Meetings is unapologetically all about accessibility.
Post presentation reviewing.
Finally, the full functionality of Scribe for Meetings, including all our new enhancements, is now available whether attendees are viewing the slides during a live meeting, or reviewing them later. Meeting presenters can optionally allow attendees to download the slides in a variety of accessible formats:
- EPUB
- Microsoft Word (DOCX)
- audio (via text-to-speech)
- DAISY (text and audio)
- Braille
- As a web page
The downloadable web page version of a slide deck puts the full power of Scribe for Meetings, including Read Aloud and the new accessible view, in a single, convenient HTML file. The slides can be viewed in any modern browser, on any device.
Note that downloading of slides isn’t enabled by default. The presenter must choose to allow it.
Make your meeting presentations inclusive, and accessible, at our special offer!
With all of our new enhancements, online presentations are now more accessible to print disabled individuals than ever before.
If you haven’t tried Scribe for Meetings, we’ve made the decision easy! For a limited time, you can make a single meeting accessible with Scribe for Meetings with this special introductory offer.