[NFBCS] Questions about using MS Teams

[John]

Hello, Many companies and organizations are using Microsoft Teams for meetings.

I use Microsoft Teams on a Windows PC at work.

Microsoft and others offer YouTube tutorials.  On google I used keywords “microsoft teams accessibility blind tutorials YouTube shortcuts” and found https://youtu.be/Q0gO8BjKl2Y .

If you have suggestions on how to perform the following 6 actions, please email NFB-Science at nfbnet.org or email me personallyjohnmillerphd at hotmail.com

Built into Teams is the shortcut Ctrl-4 to go to the calendar. I do not have any questions about how to go to calendar, I just want to share how useful this shortcut is. It is important to have the discussion among blind users about effective methods to join a Teams meetings with proper settings. To go to calendar, press Ctrl-4, then you can down arrow to move time by the half hour.  You can press enter on an event and press tab to navigate to the join meeting button, then press enter on the join meeting button.  You can check and uncheck dialog box options such as video off, mic on, and select connect. You will now be placed in a meeting. You can give the command Alt-F4 to leave a meeting, there are other ways to leave a meeting as well.
When Microsoft Teams went down, the IT department suggested a remedy of logging out and logging back into Teams. I got sighted assistance to do these actions but have not succeeded in doing them without sighted assistance.
This is a piece of advice about changing windows credentials in Teams.
I have noticed that when I change my Windows credentials, Teams is no longer working for me. IT steps in and does something to fix the situation. I have learned to change my Windows credentials early in the business day and to setup a test meeting with a colleague after my credentials have been changed to make sure that Teams will connect me to a meeting properly.
When I join a meeting using JAWS for Windows, I feel there are lots of steps to verify that video is off, and microphone is on.  It seems to me that, depending on who created the meeting, sometimes mic is on by default and sometimes it is off. I have encountered the experience that if the mic is off before I connect, that I often cannot toggle the mic on during the meeting. Instead, I need to leave the meeting, check the mic on checkbox and the enter the meeting.  This allows my colleagues to hear my audio just fine.
My sighted colleagues can see the visual indicator for background noise for a particular participant.  This allows them to suggest that a participant unmute themselves when they are speaking, and the group does not hear their audio. I would like to know the blindness technique for observing this indicator.
In some meetings, there is a high level of traffic in chat. The screen reader notifications from chat can interrupt the speech of participants.  There is an ellipsis symbol under conversation with a choice for mute conversation.  Without sighted assistance, I have not learned how to access this feature. I would like to learn how to do so.  Multiple blind people have asked how to do this solution.  It is quite disruptive when the mute feature is not applied.
Very Best,

John Miller