[ATcoord] Fw: Zoom share audio and JAWS issue

[Monica Olsson]

Hi AT Coords,

I saw this message on a different e-list through Educause and want to pass along in case you or your colleagues/students may be impacted. It sounds like this issue is being reported to Zoom and Freedom Scientific, so that's good, and I hope to hear of a solution soon.

It also sounds like the person sharing this issue was able to work around the problem by providing the Jaws users on their campus an earlier version of Zoom.

Have any of you, your colleagues or students run into this issue?




[Title: SBCTC logo - Description: Compass]

Monica M. Olsson (she/her/hers)

Policy Associate – Accessible IT Coordinator

Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges

molsson at sbctc.edu<mailto:molsson at sbctc.edu> • o: 360-704-3922 • c: 206-914-7187

sbctc.edu<https://www.sbctc.edu/> • Twitter: @SBCTCWashington<https://twitter.com/SBCTCWashington> • Facebook: @WASBCTC<https://www.facebook.com/wasbctc/>

________________________________
From: The EDUCAUSE IT Accessibility Community Group Listserv <ITACCESS at LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> on behalf of John Williams <jw115 at RICE.EDU>
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2021 8:55 AM
To: ITACCESS at LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU <ITACCESS at LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>
Subject: [ITACCESS] Zoom share audio and JAWS issue


Last week we discovered an issue with the latest version of Zoom (5.7.6) and JAWS, so I’m sharing what we found in case anyone else has the same trouble.



The person who reported this is an expert JAWS user, so we were able to quickly rule out JAWS and Windows settings as the cause. Previously, they have found teaching with Zoom to be fairly accessible, especially since Zoom improved a11y of polling. However, when this person attempted to lead their first online class of the fall ‘21 semester, they realized Zoom started mixing all audio from both soundcards and sharing it to all attendees while screen sharing with computer audio. This caused a major distraction because students were required to closely analyze an audio track synchronized to text, but JAWS was talking over everything during the entire demo. Normally, the separate soundcards allow the instructor to limit JAWS audio to just their earbuds and the rest of the class never hears it.



After some troubleshooting, we rolled the user back to the last known version of Zoom they used in the spring where the issue didn’t occur, which was 5.6.0. Sure enough, rolling the version back “fixed” the problem. However, when they relaunched Zoom later, it automatically updated to the latest version again and the issue returned. One of our campus Zoom admins was able to provide a non-updating version of the installer for version 5.6.0.



We’ve reported this issue with 5.7.6 to Zoom support, including video evidence, and last I heard it has been moved to their developers. Hopefully they will apply a bug fix with the next release since we clearly demonstrated that Zoom was the cause of the issue. In the meantime, if anyone else experiences this same issue, please reach out and I can provide you with more specific details about the workaround.



Best regards,



John A. Williams (he/him)

Digital Information Accessibility Coordinator

Rice University | Learning Environments

6100 Main St., Houston, TX 77005 | MS 119





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