For sign-language interpreters

Sign-language interpreting

You do not appear in the participant grid. You appear as a floating, background-removed overlay that each viewer can move, resize and switch on or off for themselves — and nobody sees you at all until you decide to go live.

How it works

Six steps, start to finish:

  1. Get your link and set up your space

    The host sends you a private link. You need a plain green or blue backdrop behind you.

  2. Open the link and join

    Your camera is hidden from the grid automatically. Only you can see yourself.

  3. Calibrate your chroma key

    Remove your backdrop so only you remain.

  4. Choose your sign language

    This is how viewers find you.

  5. Go live

    The moment you become visible to everyone.

  6. Read the warnings

    Four things that will genuinely trip you up if you do not know them.

The host sends you a private interpreter link, different from the regular meeting link everyone else uses. It looks like this:

https://acceasy.u-i-x.com/xxx-xxxx-xxx?interpreter_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1...

That ?interpreter_token= part carries your signed credentials. Open it in the browser you will actually interpret from.

No password
Your link grants direct entry. Even if the meeting has a security PIN, you are never asked for it, and you skip the waiting room.
Valid ~12 hours
If your link expires, or the meeting is rescheduled, ask the host to send a fresh one from Share & Interpreter Invites.
Confidential
It was issued to you alone. Do not forward it — anyone holding it can join as the interpreter.
Early arrival
If you open it before the host starts the meeting, you wait on a branded screen and are admitted automatically. No need to refresh.

Setting up your space

The quality of your overlay is decided here, before any software is involved. Time spent on lighting saves ten times as much time fighting the sliders.

An interpreter in a black long-sleeved top signing in front of an evenly lit, plain green backdrop. She is framed from the waist up with clear space around her hands.
Well-framed and evenly lit: a plain backdrop, dark clothing that contrasts with it, and room around the hands.
  • A green or blue backdrop, lit evenly, with no shadows falling across it.
  • Do not wear your backdrop colour. A green top in front of a green screen will be keyed out along with the background, leaving holes where your body should be.
  • Frame yourself with room to sign. Head and hands both have to stay in frame — a close-up crops your hands, a wide shot makes you hard to read.
  • Light yourself from the front, evenly. Light from behind or the side makes calibration harder and leaves visible edges around your hands.

Joining the meeting

Opening your link takes you to the same pre-join screen everyone else sees — camera preview, name field, device pickers. There is nothing special to fill in: your interpreter status comes entirely from the link, not from anything you type. Click Join.

From that moment your camera is automatically hidden from the participant grid. Nobody sees you in a video tile. You appear only in your own overlay, visible to you alone, so you can calibrate in private.

If you get stuck at “Requesting to join”

In a Restricted meeting your interpreter link may not be enough on its own — you may also need to have been added as a member. Ask the host to add you, or to loosen the room's access level for your session.

Calibrating your chroma key

The CHROMA panel is visible only to you. Viewers never see these controls — only the result.

A meeting seen from the interpreter's side. A CHROMA panel is open showing an 'Auto-guess key' button, a key colour swatch with green and blue presets, and sliders for Similarity, Smoothness, Spill, Pedestal, Choke, Fill and Brightness. To its right, the interpreter's own keyed preview is labelled 'you · preview', with a SIGN LANGUAGE dropdown set to 'ASL — American Sign Language' and a blue Go Live button beneath it.
The interpreter's working view: calibration panel on the left, your private preview on the right with the sign-language selector and Go Live beneath it.

Start with Auto-guess

Tap Auto-guess key. It samples your camera for a moment and sets a sensible starting point — a safe starting point from your camera, then fine-tune below. It works best with a clean, evenly lit backdrop and you roughly centred in frame.

If nothing seems to happen

That usually means it could not get a confident read on your backdrop. Check your lighting and framing and try again. There is currently no error message explaining why — just no visible change.

Set the key colour

A colour swatch with two one-tap presets, green and blue. Match it to your actual backdrop.

What each slider does

Auto-guess gets you close; these get you exact. Rather than describing the mathematics, here is what you would see that should make you reach for each one.

Slider Reach for it when you see…
Similarity Backdrop still showing through → increase. Parts of you disappearing — holes in your body, hair or clothing → decrease.
Smoothness A hard, jagged, cut-out-sticker edge around you → increase. Your outline looking blurry or soft → decrease.
Spill Green or blue tint bleeding onto your skin or hair near the edges → increase.
Pedestal A faint ghostly halo or haze around your edges, even where the background is otherwise fully gone → increase.
Choke A thin fringe of leftover backdrop clinging right at your outline → increase slightly. Too much starts eating fine detail like fingers — back off if that happens.
Fill Small holes punched into you — a ring on a shirt, a gap in your hair — from otherwise-good keying being a little too aggressive → increase to patch them back in.
Brightness You are reading as too dark or washed out on camera.
Contrast The image looks flat and grey → increase. Harsh or blown-out → decrease.

There is no Reset button

If you get lost in the sliders, your only way back to a clean slate is Auto-guess again. It recalculates Similarity, Smoothness and the key colour from scratch, resets Pedestal, Choke and Fill to zero and Spill to a mild default — undoing any fine-tuning on those. Brightness and Contrast are left as you set them.

The panel collapses to a small gear icon if it is in your way; tap that to bring the sliders back.

Choosing your sign language

Above the Go Live button there is a SIGN LANGUAGE dropdown with fifteen options — ASL, LSC, IS and others — plus “Not set”.

This is how viewers find and control you. Everyone watching gets a Language button in their control bar once you go live, and your selection here decides which entry you appear under.

  • Pick the language you are actually signing. Viewers use this to decide who to watch when several interpreters are present.
  • Relaying with someone in the same language? Select the same language they did. The system treats you as a pair automatically: viewers see one entry rather than two, and do not have to pick between you mid-handover.
  • Covering a different language? You each get your own entry, and viewers choose which ones they want to see.

Your choice always wins

The host may already have set a language for you when generating your link. Whatever you select here overrides it, immediately — so if they guessed wrong, or you are filling in for someone else, just pick the right one.

Going live

A full-width button sits below your self-view. Until you press it, nothing you do is visible to anyone else — your calibration, your framing, your test movements are all private. That is deliberate: it gives you space to get things right without an audience.

State Button Your badge
Private — only you can see yourself Go Live you · preview
Visible to everyone as a keyed overlay ● Live — tap to go offline ● you · LIVE

Tapping the button again takes you back to private preview, so you can recalibrate or step away without anyone seeing. Going live again is one more tap.

What viewers see

Worth knowing, because people will ask you. Each viewer controls your overlay independently — position, size and backdrop are their choice, not yours, and one person's changes affect nobody else.

A four-person meeting with a small interpreter overlay near the top centre of the screen.
Viewers drag the overlay anywhere on the video.
The same meeting with the interpreter overlay enlarged to roughly a quarter of the screen.
They resize it from the top-left handle. It always stays square.
The same meeting with the interpreter overlay showing a solid blue backdrop behind the interpreter.
And they can put a solid backdrop behind you — transparent, black or blue — for contrast.

If two of you are relaying in the same language, viewers see a single entry for that language with a small count, not two competing options. If you are covering different languages, each gets its own row and viewers can show both at once.

Before your first session

Four things that will genuinely trip you up if you do not know them going in.

1. Keep your browser window uncovered and in front

This is the single most important habit to build. If your browser window is covered by another window, or the tab loses focus, browsers throttle background activity to save power — and that includes your camera. The video going out to everyone freezes or blanks until your window is back in front. Nobody sees this happen from the outside; they just see you stop moving.

In practice:

  • Keep the meeting window on top and uncovered for your whole session. A second monitor dedicated to it is ideal.
  • Never minimise it, and never put another app's window on top of it — including your own notes or a chat app.
  • Monitor yourself on a second device, such as your phone. Using another window on the same computer risks covering the very window that has to stay uncovered.

This is browser power-saving behaviour, not a fault in Acceasy Meet. No setting fixes it — only the habit.

2. Nothing survives a page reload

A refresh — accidental or deliberate — resets your chroma calibration, your sign-language selection and your live status. You will have to calibrate, reselect and go live again. If you can avoid reloading mid-meeting, do.

3. A new tab needs the link again

Your interpreter link only applies to the tab you opened it in. If you open the meeting in a second tab or a different browser, paste the link there too — otherwise it will not recognise you as the interpreter.

4. If the meeting is ever recorded, you are captured unkeyed

Recording is switched off on this installation. But where it is enabled, recordings capture you on your raw backdrop — not composited the way live viewers see you. Worth knowing if you or the host plan to reuse a recording afterwards.