[Athen] Accessibility of Go To Meeting

[John Gardner]

For what else it is worth, ViewPlus once began using GoToMeeting but found it not to be accessible. We had a conversation with the company and were told that it was created before they knew/cared about accessibility, that it would be expensive to fix it, and that they had no intention of doing so.  I have ignored it since then.
John


From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of foreigntype at gmail.com
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2021 2:13 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Accessibility of Go To Meeting

FWIW, I had a terrible time logging in to the TextHelp Go-to-Meeting webinar as well. First it took an extraordinary number of clicks just to get the meeting to start. When it started, there was no sound and no controls to adjust sound. Logged out and logged in a second time and got audio only without the presentation. Logged out and back in a THIRD time (now 20 minutes into the 60 minute webinar). Not sure that my login obstacles were software related but agree wholeheartedly that TextHelp, a global company specializing in *accessibility* should use tools for their presentations that are accessible to all users, or use tools which are recognized as *accessible* for a variety of accessibility software.

Wink Harner
Accessibility Consultant/Alternative Text Production
The Foreign Type
Portland OR
foreigntype at gmail.com<mailto:foreigntype at gmail.com>
480-984-0034
This email was dictated using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Please forgive quirks, misrecognitions, or errata .


On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 1:34 PM Russell Solowoniuk <solowoniukr at macewan.ca<mailto:solowoniukr at macewan.ca>> wrote:
Hi Robert,

I just ran into the same issue as you trying to log in to the Orbit Reader webinar. I am using JAWS 2022, and was not able to get in at all. I tried using the JAWS cursor, but that didn’t work. I closed the meeting and tried to sign back in, and after that, the text that I was able to read with the JAWS cursor was in Spanish. I ran into this same issue in a TextHelp! Webinar back in December of 2020.

I didn’t recall how I managed to get around this in December, but found some notes I had made, and in December I was able to get in on my iMac. Luckily I was working from home today, so had access to my iMac, and, sure enough, I was able to log in with no issue at all. The sad part is that there were only 10 minutes left in the webinar by the time I figured it all out!

They will be sending out a recording of the webinar tomorrow, so I’ll listen to the rest of it then.

I agree that we should suggest to vendors that they not use the GoTo Webinar platform. It’s so frustrating.

Take care,

Russell

From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu>> On Behalf Of Robert Spangler
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2021 8:51 AM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>>
Subject: [Athen] Accessibility of Go To Meeting

EXTERNAL:  Use caution.<https://myportal.macewan.ca/help.html#external-email>

Hello,

I use NVDA and JAWS, and have not had any success using Go To Meeting with either one!  When I access a meeting link, the app opens, but I cannot navigate any part of the window.  In fact, I always have to ask a student worker to click to join meeting with computer audio, because I can't access it.

I wanted to check here if other screen readers have experienced this and if there are any workarounds.  I think that if Go To Meeting is unwilling to fix their software (and it's been unusable like this for years) we need to start convincing vendors (I'm in a Texthelp webinar currently) to stop using it, and to use something like Zoom or Google Meets.

Thanks,
Robert


--
Robert Spangler
Disability Services Technical Support Specialist, Office of Learning Resources (OLR)
University of Dayton
Ryan C. Harris Learning Teaching Center (LTC)
Roesch Library Room: 023
Phone: 937-229-2066
Fax: 937-229-3270
For Deaf/Hard of Hearing, call 711 (Ohio Relay)
For office hours and further OLR information, please visit
go.udayton.edu/<http://go.udayton.edu/learning>olr
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