We have all seen international press meetings where there is always one interpreter who helps people who are hard of hearing in decoding what is being said. Well, it seems taking inspiration from that American Tech giant, Microsoft has unveiled a new sign language view for its Teams video chat conferencing platform. As the name suggests, this new feature is for people who are deaf/hard of hearing, interpreters and others who make use of sign language.
With the help of this feature, people like (mentioned above) will be kept in the center stage, in one place throughout the meeting.
Speaking of which, Microsoft teams will now come with their own ‘Sign Language View’. This feature will enable users to prioritise up to two participants ‘videos so that both of them stay visible and in one location throughout the entire meeting
With the help of this new feature, interpreters and other people using sign language will be kept in one place, video feeds will be in appropriate shape and size for the clear visibility of the sign language and much more.
In order to use this feature, it is important that the sign language view is enabled so that the prioritised video streams come up automatically in the right aspect ratio and with high quality.
Keep in mind this option will be personal and will not interfere with or distract from others present in the meeting.
In order to use this feature, users can find this option by going to the Settings menu followed by the Accessibility pane where the option can be turned on. Upon turning it on, the option will be on by default for all meetings
To make things much easier, users can pre-assign interpreters before the meeting beings. For assigning external interpreters, users will have to allocate them during a meeting via the Accessibility tab in the app’s Settings.
To conclude, Microsoft in its press release has mentioned that these steps are just the beginning, and the company will continue to work on these.
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