TOHRU - Trace Online Hand-Raising Utility

The Trace Center developed the online hand raising utility to facilitate participation in online teleconferences. The program provides a way for participants on a phone call to be able to "raise their hand" and add themselves to a speaker queue. As the person moderating the meeting recognizes speakers, he or she can remove them from the list.

The tool allows individuals to be recognized out of order if necessary, but the order in which people raise their hands is always maintained. Those people who are online can see the up-to-date list of people who have raised their hand and can add their own name with the "Raise My Hand" button at the bottom of the list. They can also remove themselves from the list with the "Lower My Hand" button. Since some individuals may not have computer access, another feature allows the moderator to add people to the queue manually. Usually, this is done by having the person simply say their name on the call. Only a moderator can remove people from the list (although individual members can remove themselves from the list). The moderator of the meeting is usually also the chair, but others can be appointed to manage the list by giving them the moderator password and having them use it when they sign in. Multiple people can serve as moderators at the same time when that is useful. To optimize it for accessibility and device independence, the tool does not rely on scripting and uses all relative fonts so that it can easily be zoomed up or down to meet vision and screen real estate issues.

TOHRU was developed by Gregg Vanderheiden, Jon Hardin, and Jared Smith. It can be found online at SourceForge.

For more information, visit the TOHRU Home Page.

Get Involved

If you are interested in this project or have something to contribute include  [TOHRU] in the subject line of an email to Contribution@RaisingTheFloor.net.