Microsoft teams

Microsoft Teams is accessible on Windows, iOS and Android, so I would think there's a good chance of it being so, or at least mostly so, on Mac. If not, there is the ability to join meetings in the browser, and maybe that will work if the app doesn't.

As for dialing in, it depends, but if the dial in number is formatted correctly iOS will dial the conference and ID info all in one go. If it isn't, you'll have to read off the ID in one ear and type it in manually. I would say you might as well use the iOS app at that point, but to each their own.

Good luck!

Hello. This app works fine on all my devices I use. You can also use it on any browser as well, which is also nice.

Hey,
Yep it definitely is a little clunky but I've found the following:
COMMAND+1, 2, 3, 4, etc move you to the different sections, so COMMAND+1 is activity, COMMAND+2 is chat, etc.
COMMAND+E puts you in the search, you can type statuses by starting each command with a /. So /away or /offline or /busy
In Chats, you need to SHIFT TAB up through the conversations and press ENTER to put in reactions.
When you're in a call/meeting you can use COMMAND+SHIFT+B to hang up, COMMAND+SHIFT+A to ansewer and there's quite a few other keyboard commands. COMMAND . (that's COMMAND+FULL STOP/ or PERIOD dpending on what part of the world you live in is the list of keyboard commands you can use in Teams.
Hope this helps a bit.

With Skype shutting down, I've been forced to move to teams. And it's not a nice experience so far. The shortcuts above help though.

Cmd+J is supposed to put me in the most recent message in a chat, but instead it will put me back to a message I've already read. Cmd+P seems to work the same way. Shift+Tab from the message box works better but is still a little erratic. Cmd+R is supposed to put focus in the message box, I think, but it only works on occasion. I've found navigate to text field works a bit better. I suspect the commands are context aware so if your focus isn't in the right place then the command doesn't work.

It's good that Cmd+2 takes me to the chats list and I can up and down arrow through them. However, it doesn't tell me if there are unread messages. I also have to listen to it say "has context menu cell" before it tells me who the chat is with which makes it a bit more a chore. I think maybe Cmd+Option+U is the way to find out if there are any unread chats.

I found Cmd+. (full stop) will bring up the list of keyboard shortcuts.

It feels like avoiding any VO commands like VO+left/right is probably the way to go as they just ping about all over the place.

I also found that I couldn't use Cmd+Shift+H to hang up a call unless the call was selected. So it wasn't working until I went to Window, selected the call from there and then used it. Fortunately Cmd+Q works from everywhere in an emergency but it's a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

I guess I'll get the hang of it eventually but it does seem to be horribly clunky and on my M2 Pro Max with 32gb RAM it is really sluggish and unresponsive. Skype wasn't perfect but at least it was quite lightweight and I could navigate it pretty easily.

Only thing I've found about Teams that is better is that if I cmd+tab away then back, it tells me who the current chat is with. In Skype it was possible to totally lose track of who you were talking to.

I use Teams with Windows and iOS. The easiest way to get in to a meeting is through Outlook either through a meeting invite or the reminder that comes up 15 minutes before the meeting.

That's Microsoft's biggest strengths I feel, easily accessible Strong documentation and support articles.
Just 1 google search away, Teams keyboard shortcuts for all platforms: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/keyboard-shortcuts-for-microsoft-teams-2e8e2a70-e8d8-4a19-949b-4c36dd5292d2

That's Microsoft's biggest strengths I feel, easily accessible Strong documentation and support articles.
Just 1 google search away, Teams keyboard shortcuts for all platforms: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/keyboard-shortcuts-for-microsoft-teams-2e8e2a70-e8d8-4a19-949b-4c36dd5292d2

That's Microsoft's biggest strengths I feel, easily accessible Strong documentation and support articles.
Just 1 google search away, Teams keyboard shortcuts for all platforms: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/keyboard-shortcuts-for-microsoft-teams-2e8e2a70-e8d8-4a19-949b-4c36dd5292d2

That's Microsoft's biggest strengths I feel, easily accessible Strong documentation and support articles.
Just 1 google search away, Teams keyboard shortcuts for all platforms: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/keyboard-shortcuts-for-microsoft-teams-2e8e2a70-e8d8-4a19-949b-4c36dd5292d2

That's Microsoft's biggest strengths I feel, easily accessible Strong documentation and support articles.
Just 1 google search away, Teams keyboard shortcuts for all platforms: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/keyboard-shortcuts-for-microsoft-teams-2e8e2a70-e8d8-4a19-949b-4c36dd5292d2

That's Microsoft's biggest strengths I feel, easily accessible Strong documentation and support articles.
Just 1 google search away, Teams keyboard shortcuts for all platforms: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/keyboard-shortcuts-for-microsoft-teams-2e8e2a70-e8d8-4a19-949b-4c36dd5292d2

I think what SeasonKing is trying to impress upon us, is that Microsoft is good for strong documentation practices. 😅

I couldn't find any documentation from Microsoft about Teams - I guess they couldn't be bothered.

Only kidding.

I am beginning to learn, though, that context is everything. So Cmd+Option+U works fine if I am in the chat list, but not elsewhere. Similarly, with CmD+R. And I Mentioned Cmd+Shift+H to hang up a call.

I don't know why these shortcuts can't work from everywhere really. And I would also love it if apps like this could make proper use of the Mac menu system as it makes it a lot more discoverable and means you don't have to remember shortcuts for absolutely everything.

I think with a lot of apps on the Mac you need to either think of them as Mac apps, and go the whole VoiceOver key route with them, or as Windows apps in which case you abandon VO keys and go for the tabs and arrows. Not sure why the focus order is so different with VO+left/right than with tab. I would guess that tab order is something specifically setup in an app because it works regardless of whether you use a screen reader, whereas VO focus order is something handled by black magic or the like.

It is infuriating that if you approach the app in the wrong way you will get hopelessly lost. But maybe that's just the life of a screen reader user.

[Edit] - for some reason my brain decided that I use a screen saver not a screen reader.

I installed it because of Skype's end, soon anyway. It claims it's synced my Skype contacts, but it only has contacts that are phone numbers, or possibly that have filled in a phone number. So there's really nobody I actually talk to in them, they're left over from when I used to use Skype to call people. So I don't get to try any of the chatting and all. I assume itwill grab the rest of them at some point, but who knows? I can't seem to find a way to force it tograb them all either.

I love Teams I must say, but it definitely has a learning curve and has some quirks.
I use it on Windows at work, and have found that when using it on the Mac, the best bet is basically to pretend I’m on Windows! Cmd + numbers to jump between tabs, the tab key and the arrow keys for navigation, Enter for selecting and interacting with things, and Escape key are your friends. The VO keys are not your friend.
Dave

For typing indicator in chats it's easier if you're in standard grouping behaviour. By the way it took me one year to understand that when there are lots of ... message, group. Message. Message, end group... in standard, you can just do vo shift arrow and it doesn't do the nested thing. I always use teams in chrome not the app cause I don't need any desktop capability the web app might not have and am happy with it.
What bothers me with vo is that I have to select the full message with cmd c on that message, I can't select some lines only because vo selection commands work 2/10 times. Something that's a none issue with chromevox. But teams is definitely very usable on all platforms, thank you microsoft.
ps: yes, apple are poor at documenting properly, it's rare to see beyond their marketing of oh we do the greatest of everything.....

Yes, In deed I mean that.
Was that a sarcastic remark from your side, or, was my wording wrong?

Hey @SeasonKing. Due to a bug on the website, your comment was posted 6 times, so Brian was just having a laugh. 😂
Rest assured we’re aware of the issue and investigating.
Dave

@SeasonKing,

Like Dave Nason said above, your post multiplied about half a dozen times, so I was just poking fun at that, not at you directly. 😇

Are you talking about navigating the chats list? I do usually have grouping set to ignore, so I tried it with standard and I'm not noticing much difference. If I interact with the chat list I still get all the "has context menu" stuff around each item. If I interact again I don't hear it but then I'm in the text and can't move. Is this what you mean or am I misunderstanding? It would be really nice to be able to get rid of that extra verbosity.

One thing that currently annoys me - my usual trick if I'm typing in a text box is to vo left then right again to hear what I've typed. But, again, using VO commands in teams seems like a bad idea. I need to get out of the habit! I guess just cmd+A to highlight everything is the way to go, but it takes a while to retrain instincts.

When you are getting the message, "has context menu", can that be turned off by adjusting verbosity? Just wondering if an activity can be made to perhaps lower that setting just for teams?

No guessing why but my experience with Teams on Windows and IOS has been excellent. I have access to Enterprise Disability Helpdesk so I am bouncing off some improvement ideas for accessibility and otherwise. Like on IOS why can't I choose my own tones for Teams alerts?

I have verbosity set to low. I had a look at the custom options and made sure everything is set to the lowest setting. I messed around in the Hints and Announcements tabs, but that didn't help.

One thing I fid find is that if I set Navigate web pages by:Grouping items instead of DOM order, then it switches the wording around so that the "Context Menu" bit appears after the name of the chat. This is much better, but I suspect I will find somewhere that totally breaks as a result of this.

Teams on iOS is very acccessible. Similar to using any messaging service really. on Windows it is ok but to be honest as the iOS version works so well I just stick to that. Having no Mac can't say for that.

I find it quite clunky on my mac. Also I find my self typing where I am supposed to use the keyboard to navigate to certain screen elements. I prefer to use my iPhone or iPad with Teams.

My state's Department for the Blind uses Teams for communications between clients and their counselors, etc. Teams on iOS is pretty good. I have used it a little on windows, I do not believe I ever used it when I ran my MacBook, but from what I am reading here, it does not sound like it would be pleasant.

It's usable enough on the Mac.

It's obviously a web thing that's just pretending to be a full blown app on its own. And it is sluggish as a result and not very Mac-like. But if you bend to its will, it is not as painful as it might first appear.

I have teams for work. I use teams on both windows and my iPhone 15. Teams is very user friendly on both platforms however I whish the same notification sounds that are available on MS teams for windows become available on Teams for iPhone. A minor annoyance... I also like the video effect backgrounds on teams for windows and iPhone. Apparrently, when I'm on a teams meeting it looks like I am at some exotic location (not my words) when I have the background set to a beach.

Sometimes, and this is only sometimes, when I finish a chat and go back, VO will stop reading chat-list items. It will read items on bottom nav-bar, the top search button etc, but completely ignore the chat list. Even when I try to put my finger on one of the chat list items, it doesn't move VO focus there, doesn't announce the chat list item name no matter what.
Only way to get around this issue I found is to close teams from app-switcher, and reopen.
Anyone else experiencing this, any solution?

OK, this may never happen again but I randomly found that it was impossible for me to give the Teams app focus. Every time I switched to it, it would take me to Chrome instead - like it was bouncing from the teams app to Chrome. This happened when I closed and reopened the teams app as well. then it made VoiceOver go totally crazy - like it was just stuttering the names of the apps over and over again and it took a little effort to escape. When I quit Chrome, it all went back to normal.

Just when you think you have seen everything on the Mac....

Not that I've ever experienced it but I tend to always use teams in the browser (chrome). Because it's essentially Electron under the hood, and I haven't encountered any edge cases yet where the desktop app would truly be beneficial. And I do quite a lot with it, it's my main interface for chatting in college, a lot of screen sharing, calls obviously, and it just works fine! Even the way I use it on Windows has slightly changed. And it works even better on with chromevox. Microsoft has done a great job on that one.
I agree that the ios app is incredible and at least they have bothered enough to create a native app, or native enough, unlike what discord does I think.
@mr grieves: m2 pro or m2 max?

If i'm in a chat and someone sends me a message, is there any way I can read it word by word or char by char?

I can use Shift+tab then arrows to get to the message. Using left/right arrows does nothing. Trying to interact with the text using VO+Shift+down seems to be a mistake. Using VO+W does nothing. The only way I've found is to use VO+Shift+C to copy, then paste it elsewhere and hope I've done it in time so I don't just end up with some VO fluff instead.

Re app vs Chrome - I haven't tried it in Chrome yet but I prefer an app because it just keeps it separate so I can use keyboard commander to jump to it and it can have its own activity. Maybe you can do that sort of thing with Chrome anyway. But I presume the overall experience is going to be about the same if the app is just a wrapper around Chromium anyway.

Does the usual method not work (VO-Command-Left/Right-Arrow to Characters or Words, respectively, then VO-Command-Up/Down-Arrow to read)? The text you want to review needs to be in the VoiceOver cursor.

Aha - thank you, Jason - that works. That was the one way I hadn't tried.

Since I abandoned quick nav, I have never used the rotor in this way on the Mac. Normally if I want to do this sort of thing I interact with the text and go from there. Now to try to find a good place on my numpad to do the same.

Yeah no interaction and interaction in text on the web is really, really messed up, use the rotor when you can. Remember though that the .ord/character rotor is not in sync with the line like it is on ios. VO up and down arrow works in pdf though (safari and preview) and it's synced with interacting with that text afterwards...

This app is really getting on my nerves.

So this morning I started up Skype and Teams. There was a chat going on in Skype, but every time I tried to switch to it, Teams would get focus instead. I had to quit teams.

Then later on I was on a teams call and tried switching to Chrome. But, again, teams refused to give up focus. I think in this case maybe there's likely a floaty call panel or something for teams which is doing it, although that wasn't the case before.

Re the rotor - I think this is one of the problems with the Mac. There are about a hundred ways of doing everything on the Mac, but only one of those ways tends to work depending on context. The rotor dial makes perfect sense on the phone but I can't see any good reason to need it on the Mac. Other than that it works in this particular case because other ways randomly won't.

Anyway, sorry, teams has put me in a bad mood this morning. :D

I've never used the app...

I am pretty close to binning the app and trying a Safari web app thing instead. I have a feeling you can do something similar with Chrome but I've never tried it. But if the app keeps stealing focus then I haven't got the patience for it.

Whilst the rotor thing is working, it is really, really sluggish to use to the point where it's just quicker to do the copy last spoken thing and paste it somewhere else to read.

No teams on safari......... too complicated for nothing, use just chrome it works well.
This is why I ranted? ... about text selection fundamentally broken in pdf and web on macos while it's very very good on ios.

Are you saying that because Safari is generally bad or have you tried it for this? I'm not finding Chrome very good these days. I was swinging towards Chrome but the pendulum has definitely gone back the other way.

Do you just have it setup as a tab like any other or are you doing anything fancy like creating a web app for it or something?

No you have to do some privacy changes in safari settings which I never did because chrome just works for me so feel free to explore and tell us here how it is.

So I finally lost patience with the app and thought I would try the web version.

Firstly, I think I tried to be clever by taking the login page and creating a Safari web app from that. That didn't really work because it punted me back to Safari during login. I logged in using Safari but it looks like it won't let you change the URL of a web app once set. You can give the URL box focus and VoiceOver confidently tells you that to enter text all you need to do is type. But it lies. So I binned the app and started again. This meant having to login a few times as I had to get the proper URL from Safari then create an app, and then login all over again in that app. But it seems to have now worked.

Halfway through I lost faith and set it up as a pinned tab in Chrome, so I will bounce between the two until I figure it out.

I haven't had to mess with Permissions at all, but then I've not had a call yet so I suspect that might be related to the microphone or camera.

All I've done so far is look at a couple of chats but I am gobsmacked by how much better it already feels. The interface is reasonably snappy - I don't get all the weird bits of verbosity going up and down the chats list so I've not had to use my custom activity. Scrolling up and down the chats is fast - the whole thing has lost the sluggishness of the main app.

I also found that if I am reading a chat and try to use VoiceOver keys then it doesn't go crazy with the navigation. So it is now possible to read by word or char by interacting with text as I am used to. Sure the focus whizzes around a bit so it takes a few goes, but in a way that's normal for VoiceOver (sadly) and you can have another try without having to spend ages getting focus back where it was.

Unfortunately I had just been getting used to the keyboard shortcuts and now they are different. For example, Ctrl+Shift+2 to go to Chats instead of Cmd+2.

I don't know how that app can be so bad if it is simply a wrapper around the web site. I am beginning to think that it is more than that. But whatever it is, that app is awful and should not be used by any VoiceOver user ever.

Anyway, the moral of this story is firstly don't make assumptions like "it's a web site in an app, so the web app will just be the same". And secondly, listen to the blind guy. He knows what he is talking about.

I had my first call using the Safari web app today. It asked if I wanted to grant access to the camera and microphone, so I said yes. And then it just worked. So I've not had to do anything weird with the permissions at all.

I also noticed that the hang-up shortcut seemed to just work even though I think my focus was in a chat.

Sometimes the focus goes a little funny so you just need to keep attention on where you are, but that's not unusual on the Mac.

I've not felt the need to switch to Chrome yet, although it's still there and pinned. I can use Cmd+1 to switch to it quickly so it isn't a bad option, but I just slightly prefer to be able to use my VO shortcut to bring up the web app.

One thing I do really like is that if I am browsing through the chats, it will tell me the last message sent which it doesn't do in the main app.

The only thing I've found is that the notifications aren't spoken, which they are on the app. This is both good and bad depending on what you are doing at the time. But it does mean I have to keep flipping to the app every time it makes a noise.

I haven't quite figured out how to grab images or follow urls that are sent. If I want to copy an image, I think I can bring up the actions menu then choose open menu, then open image in browser and then I can copy it and throw it at my OCR. And for the link I just copied the whole message and picked it out. I'm sure there are better ways - will rummage around the shortcuts again when I can be bothered.

There are a few things in the web app that I'm not liking.

Firstly, if I type a message it does not speak the characters unless I select them. I know some people like this but I never trust that the Mac is typing anything unless I can hear it. (This one is not the case in Chrome but not sure about the other issues)

Then if I type @ to mention someone, the popup that appears isn't really accessible so you just need to guess, then move back and forwards to see if you were right.

I'm also finding at random times I must be pressing a symbol that is bringing up a popup because sometimes I'm typing and it all just goes to.... erm... insert word allowed on Applevis here.

I also find that sometimes I have to fight with focus to get it back to where I want - like switching between the side panels a few times to get to the right one.

No showstoppers but it all makes for a slightly annoying experience.

The thing I don't like about Chrome is that I can pin a tab and use Cmd+1 to switch to it, which isn't too bad. But if I open up a different window then I have to get back to the main window for that shortcut to work. And although I pinned the tab I also managed to close it somehow. It is just easier in a separate app.

Last time I tried teams in safari it was still in preview and I had to disable some privacy features which I didn't, isn't it no longer the case?
I don't have any issue hearing what I type in the chat box on chrome. Wow I didn't know that rotor didn't work in the app, it seems really really messed up then.
For me I am able to use teams relatively easily for call, screen share, and active chatting.

I didn't need to change any privacy options. The first time I started an audio call it asked if I wanted to allow access to the camera and microphone and I said yes. That was it.

I'd say it is pretty usable in Safari, just annoying. As with a lot of things on the Mac, it requires you to dedicate a fair chunk of your brain power just to the mechanics of the thing rather than being able to devote it all to the task at hand. Chrome might be better. I should probably give it more of a try sometime. It will likely just have a tipping point like the app.

Wow, I'll try in safari to see. Before it would say teams is in preview and then I'd had to change a lot of things to get it work.
No major problem on chrome for me though.