Top Tips for Microsoft Teams if you’re Hard of Hearing or Deaf

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Top Tips for Microsoft Teams if you’re Hard of Hearing or Deaf

If you’re deaf or hard of hearing, Microsoft Teams has accessibility features that are great to ensure you get the most out of your Teams experience. The following top 5 tips are hopefully beneficial to get you started.

      1. Turn on live captions

Microsoft Teams can now detect conversations had in meetings and present real-time captions.

To use this feature, go to your meeting controls and select More Options > Turn On Live Captions (preview).

The Turn on live captions option in the Teams meeting options menu

For further information on using live captions within Microsoft Teams, visit Microsoft’s blog on Using Live Captions in a Teams Meeting.

2. Pin important people in your Microsoft Teams meetings

Do you need the assistance of a sign language interpreter in your Teams meetings? You can pin their video on your screen so it’s always visible no matter who is talking.

To pin a video, right-click on the video and select Pin.

    3. Use the shortcut to quickly turn your camera on or off

Making signing and lip reading as easy as possible, you can toggle your camera on or off by pressing Ctrl+Shift+O.

    4. Access meeting recordings and transcripts

After a meeting or live event has ended. you can now refer to transcripts and recordings for a record of the discussion.

For more information on Microsoft Teams recordings, read the Microsoft article Play and Share a Meeting Recording in Microsoft Teams.

5. Pop out the meeting into a separate window

Popping out the meeting into a separate window lets you still use Microsoft Teams to communicate and browse meeting related documents.

To have meetings open in separate windows, go to Settings > General, and make sure that the Turn on new meeting experience setting is enabled.

For more information on Microsoft Teams and how you can fully utilise Teams for your organisation, download our FREE Microsoft Teams PDF.