Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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JIRA / Confluence / Zoom / Sharepoint Users with Braille Displays -- what's your experience like? (self.Blind)
submitted by CautionarySnail
I'll be having a blind coworker joining my team very soon, and I'll be onboarding them to our team. This is their first job out of college, so they don't yet have experience with the software we use in our business day-to-day. I know they're very intelligent and perceptive, but, everyone sometimes find this software challenging. (I'm often in the role of 'tech support' for my team.)
I am a sighted person who only uses JAWS/NVDA when doing software quality testing, so I am really worried about making our new hire feel welcome, and empowering them to be as effective as possible.
We use the following software heavily:
* Zoom
* JIRA
* Confluence
* Sharepoint
Is there any advice that experienced professionals who use JAWS and/or braille displays can offer me for helping to onboard the new team member?
Are there any essential plugins that might make things easier for them when using assistive technology to navigate those sites? Or tutorials for using those packages as a visually impaired user that I could potentially leverage to try to create a better onboarding experience for them?
We often require that people are 'on camera' for Zoom meetings so that we can see facial expressions and reactions to discussions, or when someone has 'raised their hand' to ask a question. Are there any practices that will help us to make sure that an visually impaired person is fully included in our calls and meetings?
Any advice would be appreciated. If there are things I can do ahead of their start date that might be helpful, I'm glad to invest the time!
I am a sighted person who only uses JAWS/NVDA when doing software quality testing, so I am really worried about making our new hire feel welcome, and empowering them to be as effective as possible.
We use the following software heavily:
* Zoom
* JIRA
* Confluence
* Sharepoint
Is there any advice that experienced professionals who use JAWS and/or braille displays can offer me for helping to onboard the new team member?
Are there any essential plugins that might make things easier for them when using assistive technology to navigate those sites? Or tutorials for using those packages as a visually impaired user that I could potentially leverage to try to create a better onboarding experience for them?
We often require that people are 'on camera' for Zoom meetings so that we can see facial expressions and reactions to discussions, or when someone has 'raised their hand' to ask a question. Are there any practices that will help us to make sure that an visually impaired person is fully included in our calls and meetings?
Any advice would be appreciated. If there are things I can do ahead of their start date that might be helpful, I'm glad to invest the time!
AmAsabat 2 points 2y ago
Zoom fine, share point there are some good accessible themes which make using jaws easier, confluence is fine as long as it’s logical and consistent. For Jira work with them to create an accessible view and it should be fine.
Plumeria_Chicken 2 points 2y ago
I don't know anything about the last 3, but I use JAWS with Zoom and it works fine. I recommend you suggest to them to learn the keyboard shortcuts for Zoom. It's not necessary but it will likely make it much easier and faster to use.
CautionarySnail [OP] 1 points 2y ago
Thanks, this is helpful. Our daily morning meeting uses Zoom and JIRA heavily and I want to make sure that they are able to perceive what's going on, since the updates can be fairly fast-paced.
codeplaysleep 1 points 2y ago
If they're not familiar with Jira, I'd definitely spend some time going through it with them. It can have a learning curve even with vision, particularly if you have a lot of automations. Go over how to pin fields on the tickets, so that they're always in the same/consistent place, etc.
It also sort of depends on how you're using it in y our daily standsups.
We use it in our meetings, but I don't really need to see/access it at that point. It's just one guy screen sharing in Zoom and going over the status of things on the board. As long as I know the status of my stuff so I can discuss it, accessing the kanban board at that time isn't actually necessary.
Then I can just go into it myself whenever I need to read/create tickets.
It also sort of depends on how you're using it in y our daily standsups.
We use it in our meetings, but I don't really need to see/access it at that point. It's just one guy screen sharing in Zoom and going over the status of things on the board. As long as I know the status of my stuff so I can discuss it, accessing the kanban board at that time isn't actually necessary.
Then I can just go into it myself whenever I need to read/create tickets.
rumster 2 points 2y ago
Have you asked them yet what they feel comfortable with? NVDA or JAWS?
JIRA / Confluence / Sharepoint are all good
JIRA / Confluence / Sharepoint are all good
CautionarySnail [OP] 1 points 2y ago
They're starting on Monday, so I'll ask them then!
[deleted] 1 points 2y ago
[deleted]
CautionarySnail [OP] 1 points 2y ago
That's what I was hoping would be the case, that it's just a different way to parse what is coming out of JAWS. Thanks!
zersiax 1 points 2y ago
Ok. So, good news first. Zoom is quite accessible, and your new colleague should have no issue working with it.
Sharepoint, while it can be a little verbose and convoluted in places, should also be mostly doable.
Confluence is getting into tricky terrain, as is jira. The issue is that i have very little practical experience with either, which makes it hard for me to properly advise you. Things like moving cards around on the board, seeing what lane a card is in etc. can be cumbersome and hard to do at present on the Jira side. Confluence should be mostly doable, particularly where reading is concerned, although you may run into issues when pages need to be created, I just don't know for sure.
I hope that helps at least a little :) I use NVDA, but JFW should be very similar in all of these.
Sharepoint, while it can be a little verbose and convoluted in places, should also be mostly doable.
Confluence is getting into tricky terrain, as is jira. The issue is that i have very little practical experience with either, which makes it hard for me to properly advise you. Things like moving cards around on the board, seeing what lane a card is in etc. can be cumbersome and hard to do at present on the Jira side. Confluence should be mostly doable, particularly where reading is concerned, although you may run into issues when pages need to be created, I just don't know for sure.
I hope that helps at least a little :) I use NVDA, but JFW should be very similar in all of these.
CautionarySnail [OP] 1 points 2y ago
Thank you! This helps a great deal. I may create some views ahead of time for them that may make following along in daily SCRUMs easier because the board is very busy.
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