Distance Meetings During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Are Video Conferencing Tools Accessible for Blind People?
Barbara Leporini, Marina Buzzi, Marion Hersh · 2021 · Proceedings of the 18th International Web for All Conference (W4A) · doi:10.1145/3430263.3452433
Summary
This paper evaluates the accessibility of three major video conferencing platforms — Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams — for blind users who rely on screen readers and keyboard navigation. Conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic when video conferencing became essential for work, education, and social life, the study uses a two-pronged methodology. First, the researchers performed an expert inspection evaluation (cognitive walkthrough) of nine core meeting functions across the three platforms, assessing whether each function could be reached via keyboard focus, had keyboard shortcuts, and provided appropriate screen reader feedback. The inspection was conducted using JAWS 2021 on Windows, evaluating desktop versions of Zoom and Teams and the web version of Google Meet. Second, the researchers distributed an online survey to blind users through Italian Association for the Blind mailing lists, collecting responses from 29 totally blind participants who use screen readers and keyboards to access these tools. The survey was carefully designed for screen reader accessibility, using heading-based navigation and Likert scales. The study focused specifically on the participant role rather than the host role, examining fundamental tasks like joining meetings, raising hands, toggling microphone and camera, screen sharing, using chat, accessing shared content, checking device status, and viewing participant information.
Key findings
None of the three platforms was fully accessible via keyboard and screen reader. Zoom emerged as the clear preference, with 83% of participants (24 of 29) rating it satisfactory or very satisfactory, compared to 36% for Teams and 18% for Meet. On a 5-point ease-of-use scale, Zoom scored highest (mean 3.34), followed by Meet (2.71) and Teams (2.27). Zoom supported the most functions accessibly — all nine evaluated functions were at least partially usable — largely due to its comprehensive keyboard shortcuts. Key accessibility barriers included: joining a Teams meeting was unnecessarily complicated, requiring multiple non-intuitive key presses to find the "participate" button; the hand-raise function was inaccessible in Google Meet (available only in paid versions); shared screen content was rendered as images in all three tools, making it completely inaccessible to screen readers; and checking other participants' microphone and camera status required multiple steps and cognitive effort across all platforms. Chat functionality varied significantly — only Zoom provided a shortcut to open the chat area, while Google Meet's chat was particularly difficult, with messages appearing and disappearing unpredictably for screen readers. A third of participants (34.5%) found Zoom easy to use without shortcuts, but only 7.1% said the same for Teams and Meet. Seven participants reported problems with links in the chat, and nine requested additional access keys for navigation.
Relevance
This research documents concrete, function-by-function accessibility gaps in tools that billions of people depend on daily, making it immediately actionable for platform developers. The finding that theoretically accessible features often fail in practice — because they require too many steps, unclear screen reader feedback, or excessive cognitive load — highlights the gap between technical compliance and real usability. For accessibility practitioners, the study reinforces several critical principles: keyboard shortcuts are not optional extras but essential for efficient screen reader interaction; screen reader feedback must be clear and unambiguous (e.g., "microphone is on" rather than "toggle microphone"); and shared content must not be rendered as inaccessible images. The methodology combining expert inspection with end-user survey is a model for evaluating application accessibility. The pandemic context underscores how quickly digital tools can shift from convenient to essential, making their accessibility a matter of equal participation in employment, education, and social life.
Tags: screen readers · video conferencing · blind and low vision · keyboard accessibility · COVID-19 · remote work · usability
Standards referenced: WCAG 2.1 · EN 301 549 · Section 508