Tips for Interpreting on Teams
- Apr 15
- 2 min read
As more organizations across British Columbia transition to using Microsoft Teams, we thought this would be a great time to share some tips and tricks on how to best set up the platform for interpreting and visual access. While many of us have spent the last few years becoming experts on Zoom, Teams has its own unique set of features that can improve the experience for both the sign language interpreter and the Deaf, hard of hearing, and DeafBlind individuals accessing services on the platform.
Setting Yourself Up for Success
Before you join the meeting, we recommend two steps to set yourself up for success:
Download the Desktop App: While you can join Teams via a web browser, the desktop program is much more robust. It offers better video quality and ensures access to all the features available on Teams.
Create a Personal Account: We recommend signing up for a free personal Microsoft account. This allows you to save your accessibility preferences and enables the private chat feature, which is helpful for coordinating with your co-interpreter.
Optimizing Your Visual Workspace
Teams has introduced several features specifically designed for signing participants and remote sign language interpreters:
Sign Language Mode Located under More > Accessibility, this feature allows you to identify yourself as an interpreter. It ensures your video feed remains at a high resolution and stays prioritized on the screen for those who need to see you. Additionally, when participants have labelled themselves as 'signers', their video feed will be prioritized for the interpreter.
Managing Shared Content Sharing screen can result in video feeds being too small to comfortably see signing. To fix this, use the "Pop Out" feature. By popping out the shared content into a separate window, you can resize the presentation and the video feeds independently, ensuring you always have a clear view of participants signing. In Teams, you can also resize the video gallery and shared content pane within the same window, similar to how it works on Zoom.
Customizing the View Teams offers a number of different views and it's worth testing out which one works best for you. Additionally, under the view menu, there is an option to "prioritize video" which helps to enlarge participants videos and make video feeds the priority on your screen.
Practice Makes Perfect
Transitioning to a new platform takes time and "muscle memory." We suggest grabbing a colleague, setting up a test meeting, and practicing with these features so you feel confident during your next remote interpreting assignment.
Watch the full video above for additional recommendations and a detailed step-by-step walkthrough of these features!
If you have any questions about booking an interpreter or remote sign language interpreting, feel free to contact us through our live chat or our contact us page.
