I'm deaf, and this is what happens when I get on a Zoom call - Quinn Keast

This resource first appeared in issue #48 on 30 Oct 2020 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Diversity

I’m deaf, and this is what happens when I get on a Zoom call - Quinn Keast

Another reminder that our sudden working from home doesn’t affect all team members in the same way. Keast, who is profoundly deaf, relies on lip reading for verbal communication in person; but that works much more poorly over videoconference where there’s a lot less information.

This article is a good reminder that while many people require various accommodations, and many of those accommodations “work”, they are still a lot harder than not needing the accommodation. In Keast’s case, he’s been relying on live auto captioning, but those tools are still pretty poor. The whole team, to their credit, chipped in and tried tools that might work - Zoom + Otter, which had decent accuracy and kept history but lagged well behind the conversation; and Google Meet, which was after but didn’t keep history.

The whole team tried using the call with sound off and only captioning a few times, and quickly got a very hands-on understanding of the challenges Keast faced with these tools. And team members have changed their behaviour, watching captions of their own speech to make sure it’s getting it “right”, defaulting to Google Meet, and generally being more understanding (and using written communication more).