Patent Document ID: 8386255
Application ID: 12405816

Base Claim:
1. A method for providing non-video communications to non-video enabled video conference participants comprising: recognizing visually presented information at a conference module; the conference module determining information describing the visually presented information; and forwarding by the conference module, based on preference information, the information describing the visually presented information to one or more destinations, wherein the one or more destinations are non-video enabled conference endpoints, wherein video content is not provided to at least a first one of the conference endpoints, and wherein the visually presented information is obtained from at least a second one of the conference endpoints.

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Claim 9:
9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: for conference participants who have a single monaural audio-only endpoint, providing the information describing the visually presented information as an audio description via a “whisper” announcement; for conference participants who have more than one monaural audio-only endpoint, using one of the endpoints for listening to a conference and utilizing the other endpoint to receive audio descriptions of the information describing the visually presented information; for conference participants who have a binaural audio-only endpoint, using one of the channels for listening to conference discussions, and utilizing the other endpoint to receive audio descriptions of the information describing the visually presented information; for conference participants who have an audio endpoint that is email capable, SMS capable, or IM capable, sending the information describing the visually presented information via one or more of these respective interfaces; and for conference participants who have an audio endpoint that is capable of receiving and displaying streaming text, scrolling the describing information across an endpoint's display.