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Question: Does Zoom have a ‘live’ captioning feature?
- I would like live captioning in my Zoom meeting.
Answer: Zoom now has a ‘live’ captioning and transcription feature that can be enabled/disabled by the meeting host.
- Besides being an essential aspect of Universal Design for Learning, this feature is also a way of being proactive in equity and accessibility.
- The captions and transcript are machine-based.
- Captions are saved as a VTT file. Transcripts are saved as a TXT file.
- Users can see both the captions and transcript when viewing your Zoom recording.
Note: If you receive student accommodations for Zoom meetings/labs/lectures/etc where professional captioning services are requested, machine-based captions are not 100% ADA compliant. These situations require human captioning. For student accommodations help, contact the Office for Students with Disabilities.
Enable Auto-Captions/Transcription in Zoom
- In your meeting, click the Live Transcript button.
- Click Enable Auto-Transcription. To Disable Auto-Transcription, click the Live Transcript button again.
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- Once you Enable Auto-Transcription, three options appear. Participants see these same three options. These options are participant-specific.
- Hide Subtitle: Show/Hide Subtitles from your view.
- View Full Transcript: Open the Transcript panel. As someone speaks, the captions appear at the bottom of the screen and in the Transcript panel to the right.
- Subtitle Settings: Set your closed caption font size.
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