Live sign language interpreters during shared pre-recorded video content

[APAM_Office]

Hello, I am presenting a webinar which includes live sign language interpretation of content which includes a brief live panellist introduction and then shared pre-recorded video content.

Sign language interpretation of the live panellist introduction is the easy part - where I am getting stuck is how to optimally display the sign language interpreter's camera while the pre-recorded video content is shared. The sign language interpreter's camera can be spotlighted so it remains on the screen for the attendees, but my concern is that it's too small alongside the shared video content and may not be clearly visible to attendees watching the sign language interpreter.

Is there a way to increase the size of the sign language interpreter's screen, or enable attendees to increase the size themselves?

[Ray_Harwood]

In a Webinar, the Host can control the view Webinar users see.  The "standard view" gives the attendees a small window for the first Spotlighted person in the upper right corner -- clearly not what you want.

But if the Host sets the Attendee View to "Speaker" and then Spotlights the Interpreter, attendees will have a "slide bar" between the Shared Screen portion of their screen and the Spotlighted Speaker view.  They can drag that slider bar left and right to increase and decrease the relative sizes of the two windows, giving them the opportunity to make the sizes whatever works best for them.

I highly recommend testing this yourself in a practice session or another test webinar, then having some brief prepared instructions for attendees on how to modify the sizes.  It's simple, but worth communicating in advance... and maybe even giving them some time to play with it before the actual presentation starts.

[APAM_Office]

Hi @Ray_Harwood , this is really helpful, thank you! I'm browsing through Settings, in the Meeting sub-heading, and I don't actually see where the Host (me) sets the Attendee View to "Speaker". Can you point me in the right direction?

[RobertS]

Ray's solution is really good.

As a work around, I set up a second machine as a co-host and do my spotlighting from the co-host machine. In this way I can set the attendees view on the host machine and leave this laptop alone in the speaker view so that attendees have a consistant screen layout with the ASL Interpreter and the other spotlighted speaker/speakers. 

[Ray_Harwood]

Absolutely!  This isn't a static setting enabled on the web view of the Webinar, it's controlled live during the Webinar.  In the upper right hand corner where you normally see the View menu, with Fullscreen, Speaker, and Gallery selections, there are more selections available on the Host's View menu.

There's one menu when there is no Screen Sharing in progress:

And another view when Screen Sharing is in progress by another panelist or co-host:

One problem I just discovered this week is that if the Host is doing the Screen Sharing, there's no way to access that View menu for the Attendees.  Co-Hosts can change the setting, but not Hosts while the Host is Screen Sharing.  This is a pretty important omission if you are a solo webinar producer/facilitator, unless you have help or a second machine logged in to help you control this.

IMPORTANT NOTE!

I just found on the September 18 release notes the ability for an Admin to "Enable Sign Language Interpretation".  See https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/9167218155917-Release-notes-for-September-18-2022.

I do not yet see this option in my Account Settings, so can't test it.  If your event is in the next couple of weeks, my advice would be to NOT rely on it until it has been thoroughly tested, and some of us can give you guidance on its use.  But I thought it would be worth mentioning here.  I've got a Support Ticket in to Zoom to get more info.

[ENM_Interpreter · Accepted solution]

An update on the new Sign Language feature. It's now available, but needs to be activated by Zoom in the backend of your account initially. The release notes don't include any practical guidance, so I tested it a few days and made my own, posted here:  tinyurl.com/3up8uzcy
The feature requires that all interpreters, hosts and Sign Language viewers update. In testing, we found it works much better than existing solutions with shared content because the window showing the Sign Language interpreters is completely separate from the shared content and can be custom-sized. No more competing for real estate between the shared content and the interpreter's window. Some very problematic features may it difficult for interpreters working in a team to see each other.

[Ray_Harwood]

Ernest, thanks so much for the follow up and your wonderful article on the Language Solutions website!

[RobertS]

Thx for the article you linked to. Thx for the video. Very usefull.