Live class sessions can be taught accessibly on Zoom with a bit of planning, and this planning is especially important if you want to share the recorded sessions later. This post provides some practical ways to make your live Zoom lectures more usable and accessible for everyone.

Before Class

Make sure live captions are enabled

Live captions help students who are deaf or hard of hearing, students with auditory processing differences, and anyone joining from a noisy or low‑quality audio environment. By default, your UMW Zoom account should have the automated live captions feature on. If your automated captions are not on you can enable them following the enabling or disabling automated captions Zoom guide.

Let students know at the start of class that captions are available and how to turn them on. See the Viewing captions in a meeting or webinar Zoom guide.

Share materials ahead of time when possible

If you are using slides, outlines, or documents, sharing them in Canvas before class helps students follow the conversation more easily. This is especially important when screen sharing moves quickly or when students are using assistive technology.

During Class

Narrate what you are doing

When you switch slides, open a document, or draw attention to something on screen, say it out loud. For example:

• “I’m moving to the next slide, which shows a timeline of events.”
• “On the left side of the graph, you’ll see…”

Verbal cues help students who cannot see the screen clearly or at all, including students who rely on recordings later.

Read important chat comments aloud

If students ask questions or add important comments in the chat, read them aloud before responding. This ensures that everyone, including students using screen readers or watching the recording later, has access to the full conversation. Alternatively you can save the chat transcript to a text file that can be shared. See Zoom’s saving in-chat meeting guide for instructions on how to save.

Use engagement tools in ways that give all students time to participate

When using engagement tools like polls, reactions, or chat prompts, make sure all students know how to access them. Build in extra time for students to respond, since not everyone can react as quickly or navigate these tools easily.

If You Are Recording the Session

Recording a live Zoom class turns it into digital course content if made available to students afterwards. Once shared with students, it should meet the same accessibility expectations as other instructional videos. See the Accessible Recorded Presentations and Videos guide for more details.

As a reminder, there is a Zoom integration inside Canvas that can make it easy for students to access the Zoom meeting as well as any recordings you may make available. See our guide on Using Zoom in Canvas.

Use Zoom Cloud recording for automated transcripts

Recording your meeting to the Zoom cloud (instead of recording directly to your computer) will automatically create a transcript, which can be edited and used to generate captions for the recording. These captions need to be reviewed and corrected before being shared with the class.

Plan what you will say for visuals

If your lecture relies heavily on visuals, plan brief verbal descriptions of what matters most. You do not need to describe every detail, just the information a student with a visual disability would need to understand the point you are making. This may eliminate the need to create separate audio descriptions for the video.

Consider if recordings really need to be shared

Not every recorded session has to be shared with students. If a recording is not posted, accessibility responsibilities are limited to the live presentation. If you later need to share a recording with an individual student, that is the point at which accessibility work (like captions) becomes essential.

Get Support 

If you have questions about using Zoom accessibly you can: 

• Book an Accessibility Consultation 
• Send an e-mail to t2access@umw.edu