Considering accessibility while presenting and speaking can help everyone access the information or messages your are trying to convey. This article touches on best practices for presenting and speaking.
Creating a comfortable space to learn
- Arrive early and get a feel for the room, including its temperature, size, and overall setup. Rearrange furniture as needed.
- Clearly identify the objectives at the beginning of the session. Consider adding an agenda slide to your presentation so participants can have some idea of what to expect.
- Frame questions so that they are easy to understand.
- Maintain confidentiality and ask the audience to respect the privacy of other participants.
Incorporate UDL Principles and Accessibility Best Practices
- Use large fonts. Make available copies of slides and other visuals and presentation materials.
- Show captioned videos. If not available, provide a transcription of the content upon request.
- Keep the environment barrier-free.
- Use a clear, audible voice. Use a microphone if its available, even if your voice carries. Face the audience at all times.
- Make sure the room is well lit.
- Use multimedia, such as videos, overhead transparencies, visual aids, props, and handouts, in your presentation.
- Demonstrate how to speak the content of PowerPoint™ slides, and other visuals. For example, verbally describe graphs.
- Present your material in a well-organized manner, yet be flexible to adjust to your audience. Let participants know if you wish to field questions during or after your presentation.
- Address different learning styles by incorporating a variety of instructional methods that use a variety of senses (e.g., visual, auditory, kinesthetic).
- Never read your presentation.
- Maintain eye contact.
Setting up Auto-Generated Captioning During a Presentation
To enable captions during a live presentation, follow the steps below:
Open a new zoom meeting
If captions are hidden, click the CC button in your control panel to switch your settings to “show captions” If this feature is not in your control panel, you may need to log in to your zoom account to configure settings
Open your presentation and share your screen so that captions are overlayed on to your presentation.
Setting up Auto-Captioning During a Zoom Presentation
To enable automated captioning for meetings or webinars you host:
Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
In the navigation menu, click Settings.
Click the Meeting tab.
Under In Meeting (Advanced), click the Automated captions toggle to enable or disable it.
If a verification dialog appears, click Enable or Disable to verify the change.
Note: If the option is grayed out, it has been locked at either the group or account level. You need to contact your Zoom admin.(Optional) Click the pencil icon
to select which languages you want to be available for captioning. (Optional) Click the
Allow only the following users to enable captions for the meeting
checkbox, then choose to give caption enablement to the Host or Host and Co-host.
Click Save to confirm any changes.