The great video conferencing world tour and bakeoff

A friend sent RantWoman the link to this Washington Post article reviewing some of the many video conferencing options now washing over the internet.

WaPo Review of Video Conferencing Apps

RantWoman has previously had, um, awkward conversations with the friend who provided the link basically about the problem common to many organizations wanting to think about accessibility but going in with little knowledge of what to look for and what to ask about. Many organizations, as in small non profits, slightly technophobic faith communities. Honestly, RantWoman did not even relate to many of the points in the article above, so here are things on RantWoman's mind.

How will the app / platform interact with realities such as device battery and users' data plans? RantWoman is making liberal use of her own officially unlimited data plan. Unlimited, though, usually means lowered performance after RantWoman uses something like 15 GB in a month. Lately RantWoman is also getting notices mid-billing cycle saying  that she has been granted some additional increment of data. RantWOman assumes this is because of RantWoman's appetite for video conferencing. RantWoman is not sure what this should mean for instance for low-income users willing to experiment with telemedicine but who might have considerably more constrained connectivity. RantWoman has been known to say, well if telemedicine really adds value to the health care system, then insurers should be willing somehow to help pay for it, but RantWoman is getting away from her main point!.

RantWoman also soberly notes that she does not do all of her video conferencing on her own data plan; RantWoman does a considerable share of these meetings "the office!" The office is closed of course, due to the #Pandemic; that means RantWoman does not have to tend to customers or staff and is free to use the internet and to express good intentions about which technical skills she will be practicing. Meanwhile, topics on RantWoman's list to write more about in a survey article or two:

Ease of use for different categories of users from virtual birthday party attendees to corporate meetings.

Usability and work-arounds for users whose devices range from the most current available to hand-me-down devices that cannot be upgraded to the latest version of the OS.

Ease of doing additional accessibility measures such as automated captioning or feeds for ASL interpretation or CART transcription.

Ease of screen sharing and options for sharing files if for instance screen shares are not accessible for users of assistive technology.

Ease of doing privacy and full disclosure about use of data. Does the vendor sell or not?

Comprehensive implementation of accessibility standards and clear information ON THE HOME PAGE about the approach used to address accessibility..

RantWoman considers herself sort of a hardy user willing to put up with a certain sense of the wild west and new trial and error adventures around every curve. That does NOT mean RantWoman is eager, for instance to walk / cheerlead RantMOM through all of the same trial and error.

Nor does it mean that RantWoman is going, on the fly to grasp every relevant nuance of whichever platform the meetings of the day are using. This is where good documentation and decent customer service matter. RantWoman is currently annoyed by one unnamed vendor. Tech support was useless when the group of users was considering a demo, but now the vendor keeps emailing RantWoman every day. Sorry, but at this point RantWoman is most motivated just to get signed out of the email list.

But suppose one ventures further into the world of telemedicine and HIPAA-compliant platforms intended to help practitioners with all manner of services besides the technological and regulatory requirements of health care. RantWoman has just the domain for you: behavioral health, behavioral health as seen on Planet RantWoman.

RantWoman has a very good therapist. Therapist is bravely trying several different platforms that :
RantWoman has a GREAT therapist.

Great therapist is currently struggling herself to learn various online practice options. And Great Therapist has a problem child client who has been doing what problem child client does rather more frequently than she likes: almost every time RantWoman encounters software in a new realm, she winds up asking a whole bunch of accessibility-related questions, and spending time stepping through websites looking for something anything related to promises about #a11y, say on home pages. To be fair, MUCH has improved as the use of mobile devices with built-in accessibility options has expanded. But gripes above the "medium sucky" level frequently tempt RantWoman to say "You have problems. Hire me to help you fix them, in this case to the Vendor, NOT to the practitioner. See RantWoman thinks, in TeleHealth software as in tools small nonprofits use to streamline, that the customer should NOT have to know very much about accessibility to be able to evaluate information provided by the vendor. And in the meantime, there is free consulting and there is figuring out paths for billing!