Questions about using adobe connect with vo on a mac and a braille display

By Diamond tears, 7 February, 2023

Forum
Braille on Apple Products

Hi everyone, i recently just started a course with the OU here in the uk, and we will be using adobe connect for tutorials. I know people have asked before on here about adobe connect and how accessible it was on the mac, and wondered if it had improved in recent years?also does anyone know where i might find a list of commands for adobe with voiceover, as the ones i did find don’t seem to work!
Also, when i was recently on a call using this platform, it would appear that voiceover could be heard by everyone on te call, which meant that i was not able to interact with it in any way. So i thought, maybe i could mute vo and use it with my braille sense instead? Does anyone know if this would work, and if so, what are the commands for navigating it with the braille sense? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer, as this really is causing me a great deal of anxiety.

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By Bingo Little on Monday, February 6, 2023 - 00:38

HI Diamond Tears,

The Adobe Connect app now uses an HTML interface and so in theory should be fine with Voiceover. Alternatively, you can now operate Adobe Connect within the web browser and there's no need to download the app (though if you're a host, it is generally better to do so). Sighted people have had web-browser functionality for ages but it's only been made accessible relatively recently.

Now, a health warning: I'm a lecturer at BPP here in the UK and did a lot of work with adobe on making Adobe Connect accessible. I think the OU also did similar. The thing is, our work was done in a Windows environment, and I can tell you that a lot less time was put into the Mac side of things by Adobe. From a Windows perspective, Adobe Connect is much better than it was but there are still limitations and frustrations. Granted, i teach online rather than attending as a student/participant, so perhaps I feel the limitations more keenly, but they're still there.

The upside for Apple users is that the IOS app now works very well indeed if all you want to do is participate in meetings. The IOS app used to be unusable. I'd even say you could host a basic meeting using it, though you wouldn't be able to share materials and that sort of thing, so for online teaching it wouldn't really work.

Feel free to get in touch with me if you would like any help with adobe Connect. One thing I would suggest is to ask your tutors to send you slides in advance so you can view them offline as you attend your class.

By Diamond tears on Monday, February 6, 2023 - 00:38

@bingo little, thank you so much for this, it was a big help and useful to be made aware of these things! I did have an individual tutorial last week actually—she mentioned the slides and said she would be happy to send them in advance if i needed to.
A couple more questions—so if i connected my iPad up to my braille display (BSense 6), would i also be able to follow along with them that way? Also, if i were to use it on my iPad without it for any reason, would i be able to do this without voiceover intercepting? The reason i ask this is because, when I’ve been on zoom calls in the past, it hasn’t done this, unless i went out of the zoom out whilst still being on the call.
Many thanks for your help!