Adobe Connect Blog

In late March, we posted the new real-time caption pod extension for Adobe Connect 8 to the Adobe Exchange (you can find it here). Andrew Kirkpatrick, who looks after accessibility across Adobe, has a nice post on the subject on his team’s blog.

As part of my responsibility on our product management team, I worked with the external developer of the pod (they did a great job; more on them later) and wanted to share a few thoughts on the intent of the extension and, at a high level, how it can be used.

With the new Adobe Connect closed caption pod, real-time captioning of audio content can be easily integrated into meetings and events delivered via Adobe Connect. This extension ensures that participants who are deaf or hard of hearing can fully participate in online meetings and events.

The closed caption pod appears as a new pod to your Adobe Connect meeting environment. Meeting organizers hire professional captioning services from providers such as the Media Access Group at WGBH, Caption Colorado, and Caption First. Professional stenographers attend the Adobe Connect meeting or teleconference to listen to the audio and transcribe the information using specialized stenographer’s keyboards. This information is then transmitted to a captioning server.

The captions are transmitted to the Adobe Connect meeting and viewed by end users. Meeting participants have the ability to customize the caption font size and color settings to enhance readability. Participants can even skip back to re-read previous captions and then fast forward to the current captions. Participants can individually choose to display or not display captions on their individual screen. And participants can optionally save the captions as a transcript and download them at the conclusion of a meeting.

The extension is a great example of what can be done by any Flex developer using the Adobe Connect Collaboration Builder SDK available for free from the Adobe Developer Connection. Again, the developer of this pod, eSyncTraining, did a great job leveraging their Flex development expertise – adding robust new functionality to any Adobe Connect meeting to perfectly address a specific need.

If you haven’t, I encourage you to read more about and download the pod on the Adobe Exchange. And let us know your thoughts in comments or on Twitter @AdobeConnect.

Cheers,
Peter Ryce, Adobe Connect Evangelist

By Paresh Kharya, Product Manager, Adobe Connect

With Adobe Connect 8 we have made significant progress in improving the accessibility of the product. Our objective is not just to become the market’s most compliant web conferencing solution for accessibility standards but also the most usable by users with disabilities.

Some of the key accessibility improvements that we made in version 8 are:

Screen reader support

Adobe Connect 8 meeting interface supports screen readers. The benchmark that we used for developing and testing this support is JAWS 11. The meeting interface provides users who are blind or visually impaired the information that is needed to be able to participate effectively in Adobe Connect meetings.

Keyboard navigation

Adobe Connect 8 interface is easily navigable by keyboard. Users can use Ctrl + space to navigate through the main menu, Ctrl+F6 to navigate through the pods, Ctrl+F8 to access the contextual pod menu and tab to move between options within a pod. A quick demo of navigating an Adobe Connect meeting using keyboard is available on AdobeTV.

Apart from making the interface navigable via the keyboard we have also provided direct shortcuts for common functionality. These direct shortcuts will enable faster and efficient interaction with the interface. Common tasks having direct shortcuts include attendee management, starting/stopping a recording, turning microphone on/off, starting/stopping screen sharing, navigating shared content, entering chat text, etc. The complete list of keyboard shortcuts is available from the help menu on the top right corner of the meeting interface.

Real time captioning pod

We are also working on releasing an updated version of the real time captioning pod for our users. The Adobe Connect closed captioning pod is aimed at ensuring full participation in online Adobe Connect meetings and webinars by participants who are deaf or hard of hearing. It allows connection to professional captioning providers such as Caption Colorado, the Media Access Group at WGBH, and CaptionFirst. The enhancements in the updated version include more options for subscribing to captioning systems, individual control over caption font size and contrast, and the ability for participants to rewind and fast forward. Expect more information from us on this soon.

We remain committed to supporting various accessibility related standards. For a detailed assessment of our compliance to section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act please refer to our voluntary product accessibility template.

We continue to work on improving the accessibility of Adobe Connect and ensuring that Adobe Connect remains the easiest to use solution for all users. We’d love to hear from you on what amongst the new accessibility improvements is working for you, what you would like us to do more or differently.