Teams usability how accessible is it?

And to any new piece of technology, that you find yourself having to use, there is that initial concern: is this going to work for me, is the interaction intuitive or am I going to be hunting high and low before finding what I need? Does this technology register my needs or not. Microsoft does pride itself on taking usability seriously, they have a whole division dedicated to it, and they do test their apps with different kinds of users. Is Microsoft Teams flexible enough to accommodate a variety of different user needs the simple answer is not really. Instead, they are steadily making updates that attempt to catch various needs, as you can see here:

• Live closed captioning for meetings (US English only)
• Blur background or use a background image
• Pin a meeting participant's video
• Dedicated chats for each meeting
• Raise hand (Coming soon!)
• Audio suppression for background noise (Coming soon!)
• Add someone, like a coworker or interpreter, to a call.

It is a common practice among software vendors to ensure that adjustments and improvements are shared equally in their offerings. What I do like about keeping accessibility always in mind is that it does stop designers or anyone working on the app from over complicating the visualisation and function. So yes Microsoft have addressed and continue to address the usability of their apps; but the organisations need to have the same goal of keeping accessibility important to empower all employees use these applications.

Our Advice

User will need dedicated time set aside to try out Teams, and to 'make it their own' because there are no presets that users can 'switch' on different accessibility modes. So each user needs to find their way, but they don't have to do this on their own, time with our accessibility enablement service need not take long and can make all the difference.