Microsoft Teams

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Microsoft heavily promotes itself as neurodiversity-aware, and has a recruitment program for neurodiverse people, called MSND. However, neurodiversity awareness isn't particularly borne out in their products.

I've just written to them asking them to include an option to disable the little three-dot 'typing' animation in the Teams chat window, which currently cannot be turned off. Surely there are enough neurodiverse people working at Microsoft that one of them might have pointed out that for some autistic people, that animation is such a distraction as to make Teams unusable.

Note to mods: I've put this in the 'Work' topic because it's likely that if people use Microsoft Teams, they're using it at work. It it needs to move (e.g. to Rants), please go ahead.

Ahh, yes it definitely can be distracting. I find myself staring at it waiting for a response when I send messages on Teams for work.

I wonder if they will actually do something about it after hearing your complaint?

So far, I've got a form response welcoming me to MSND and inviting me to apply for positions at Microsoft. (No, I don't want to work for Microsoft.)

Neurotypicals have been complaining about how irritating it is for years, and Microsoft has simply ignored them.

I wonder if they will listen if enough ND people complain about it from the viewpoint that (a) it makes ND people less productive at work, which is the opposite of what their products are supposed to achieve, and (b) it makes a mockery of their own stated position on ND awareness when their own products palpably ignore the accessibility needs of ND people.

My professional view is that Microsoft Teams is vastly inferior to Zoom. Perhaps Teams does the job for internal remote meetings within the company, but anytime I get a Microsoft Teams invite, be it from my clients or otherwise, I'm bummed.

My autistic view is that Teams AND Zoom are difficult to deal with.

I have to use Teams in my job and it’s a waste of time to be honest. No one listens in the chats and not everyone can get into it. We used to have a WhatsApp group chat which I found easier when it came to communication but then management made us switch to teams because they think it’s more professional. Not everyone wants teams on their personal phones I don’t blame them. I can’t always get access into the important things on teams so what’s the point? This is just my experience.

They won't listen. Teams is paid by companies, not by the users. I still haven't found any user that likes Teams

We have Teams at work and I find it really clunky and cumbersome.
Maybe it's OK for people who have time to spend working out how to use all the functions - but for someone like me who is busy with other work and just wants an easy and intuitive way to pop off a quick message or check if someone is available, it's hopeless.

Well, this was unexpected.

Microsoft actually appear to have taken notice of user feedback. I've no idea whether it was specifically me (very unlikely) or hundreds of thousands of users, both autistic and allistic (more probably). But they just pushed an update to Teams, and the three-dot animation isn't there any more. It's been replaced with a static text 'Perpetrator is typing'.

Still plenty wrong with Teams, of course, but at least now I can use the thing without melting down.

Thank you everyone who complained.

I hate teams, what's even worse than the dots or the "x is typing" message for me is having to stare at yourself in meetings.
There's an option to hide your own camera feed, but it doesn't actually hide the feed, it pushes half of it down out of sight, so you can still your forehead and eyes. Baffling design, makes boring meetings utterly exhausting.

I've yet to meet anyone that actually likes teams better than email and phone...

WhatsApp have just introduced a similar typing animation in the latest update of their Android app.

It's actually worse than the Teams version; it constantly appears and disappears as the other person starts and stops typing, causing the whole screen to move up and down all the time. Once again, it cannot be disabled.

I've reported this to Meta as an accessibility issue, and also let them know that Microsoft, having introduced the same feature to Teams, removed it as a response to customer feedback.

See what happens.