On Monday, Zoom announced announced auto-generated closed captions for all free Zoom meetings accounts to make its service more accessible. At the moment the captions are only available in English, but the company says it plans to expand to other languages in the future.
Zoom’s product marketing manager of meetings & chat, Theresa Larkin said: “It’s important to us that everyone can successfully connect, communicate, and participate using Zoom. Without the proper accessibility tools, people with disabilities face tremendous barriers when using video communication solutions.”
How to enable auto-generated caption on Zoom meetings?
- Sign in to the Zoom web portal
- Go to the Settings menu
- Click on the Meeting tab
- Locate the setting titled Meeting(Advanced)
- Click on Closed captioning to toggle it
- A verification dialogue box will open, click on Enable
Without the auto-captions, Zoom meeting hosts had to either use a third-party captioning service or manually add their own captions.
Zoom has added more accessibility options over the past year, including support for screen readers and allowing multiple videos to be visible at the same time, allowing a sign language interpreter to be visible at all times, even when another user on the call is speaking.
