This week I logged on to a Zoom webinar that had chat enabled. The meeting had a large attendance. The chat quickly filled up with dozens of people sharing their city or country, and later commenting on technical problems.

Some screen reader users had a difficult experience due to the heavy use of the chat. Here are three bits of feedback:

What is your opinion on this aspect of videoconference chat etiquette? I’m not talking about offensive or dangerous content–just the volume of content.

• Should frivolous chat messages be avoided, so that screen reader users don’t miss important chat messages?
• Or is important that chat can be a chaotic free-for-all, to get the full Zoom experience?
• Does anyone have personal experience with this?
• Does anyone have a preferred etiquette guide that covers this?

Thumbnail image is an illustration of over a dozen empty word balloons, overlaid on each other in a chaotic mess. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay