When we meet with students or colleagues in person or virtually, we want to ensure everyone can participate fully. In addition to ensuring that we have accessible documents and videos, we can do things to make our meetings and classes more accessible. Paying attention to the needs of students and colleagues with disabilities creates a more welcoming and inclusive environment for all participants.
For virtual meetings, we can use installed options in the communications software to provide live captioning as well as recordings and transcripts after the meeting or online class is over. A common tool at the college is MS Teams which has excellent live caption, recording, and transcript capability. For in-person meetings, particularly when we are giving a slide presentation with PowerPoint, we can use subtitles in PowerPoint to have live captioning shown above our slides. Providing live captioning helps students who are deaf or have low hearing access to all the information we speak in the class. This can also assist students who are learning English as a second language they are able to see the written text while hearing the spoken word. This can improve comprehension and spelling. Providing live captioning can also keep students; attention on the presentation and provide opportunities for students to pick up details they may miss.
There are other ways we can support students with disabilities in our in person and virtual classrooms. This can include describing visuals, supporting notetaking, and ensuring our guest speakers also ensure accessibility in their presentations.