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Re: remote usability tests and screen sharing - best approach?

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From: Steve Green
Date: Jan 28, 2025 8:19AM

You just go into Zoom's "More" menu on the iPhone and select "Enable Original Audio".

That said, the usability of the Zoom app is absolutely appalling, and it has some accessibility issues too. We only use it for user testing sessions with people who are already familiar with it. Those sessions usually go perfectly well, but someone who has not used Zoom before might have a lot of problems.

One of the issues is that the app goes into "Safe driving mode" if you accidentally swipe right. It's then difficult to get out of that mode. You can't turn "Safe driving mode" mode off while you are in a call, but it may be possible to do so before you start.

There are various other issues, such as a non-modal overlay that the Voiceover user won't know about. Also, picture-in-picture sometimes enables itself and overlays a large part of the screen you are trying to record. Unfortunately, I can't find the file that contains details of what to do about all these things.

You should definitely spend an hour or two testing this with a colleague before doing a user testing session, so you understand all the behaviours. I can't recall if you can do the same thing with Talkback - I am waiting for a colleague to reply to me.

And of course, the behaviour of the Zoom app could change at any time. You should do your tests with the latest iOS and Zoom app versions before every project and ensure the participant has the same versions.

We do a lot less testing on Android. I personally haven't done any since we did lab-based testing, when I used to use an overhead camera and microphone so I could record the hand / screen interaction. It looks like we haven't done any remote user testing with Talkback although I know we trialled various ways of doing it. You may well find that the Zoom app has an "Enable Original Audio" menu option like the iOS app has. When you were using screen mirroring, didn't the computer's microphone pick up the screen reader audio output? My (possibly fallible) recollection is that it did, but that it was instantaneous, whereas the screen mirroring lagged several seconds behind, making it difficult to understand what was happening.

Steve