Students and faculty will have to use Microsoft Teams for online meetings instead of Zoom workplace after the Spring 2025 semester when the college cuts its Zoom subscription.
Teams is already included in Microsoft Office 365, which Columbia uses and offers to students.
The college has made it clear that it must make budget cuts to ensure the future of the college. Zoom is an added expense when the college already offers Teams.
But this change will not benefit people with disabilities.
Zoom played a crucial role during the 2020 pandemic, becoming the standard for educational institutions. The company itself reflects that growth. Its quarterly revenue went from $27 million in April 2017 to $1.1 billion in April 2024.
With that success, Zoom invested in accessibility features.
When it comes to the accessibility features of Microsoft Teams, there isn’t much there. There’s settings for the hearing impaired and for those who live with epilepsy; however, there is not a single accommodation feature found inside of Microsoft Teams for the visually impaired. Not only this, but Microsoft Teams does not implement accessibility features that are used by someone on a Mac computer. Changing the base text size on your Mac does not change the text size found inside of Microsoft Teams. That makes it difficult for people like me with a visual impairment to navigate their way around Microsoft Teams.
But even though Microsoft Teams does not offer support for large text options at this time, they do offer transcripts in closed captioning in the software; however, the college has restricted this feature as it takes advantage of the use of AI.
In a recent class, my instructor could not enable the transcription for me because of this.
That seems contradictory given that the college replaced student notetakers with an AI-assisted tool.
In another inconsistency, the college has not restricted the use of Microsoft’s Copilot, an AI-powered digital assistant that can be accessed through the Microsoft 365 suite.
Microsoft historically has never provided great accessibility accommodations for Mac users, as much of their customer base works on Windows based operating systems.
Columbia needs to make decisions about software with more than cost in mind.
All students should be able to access their learning to accomplish their academic goals, and Columbia, as a DEI institution, needs to remember that we are here.
Hunter Warner is a junior journalism major and marketing minor from Kent City, Michigan.
Copy edited by Trinity Balboa
