Zoom is now making its live closed captioning service available to free users.
The “auto-generated captions” feature uses software to detect what participants are saying during a video call and display subtitles in real-time. “It’s important to us that everyone can successfully connect, communicate, and participate using Zoom,” the company said in a Monday announcement. “Without the proper accessibility tools, people with disabilities face tremendous barriers when using video communication solutions.”
The feature was already available to free users, but you had to request access by submitting a form. Otherwise, the function was only available to paid Zoom accounts with the cloud recording feature bundled in.
The company is now making the feature available to both free Zoom meetings and webinars. For now, the technology can only be used for English-language sessions, but the company is working to expand the service to 30 other languages.
The company created a support document for how to turn the feature on. You need to first sign into your account on the company’s Zoom portal site, then go to Settings, click the Meeting tab, and then scroll down to the Closed Captioning section, where you can toggle the permission on. Version 5.7.0 of the Zoom client or higher is also required.
There’s also another option that lets you save the captions, turning the feature into a transcription service. “If you are a single user within a multi-account, please work with your account admin to enable this functionality via the web portal for all users,” the company says.
Once the permission is enabled, the host of a Zoom video meeting has to turn on auto-generated captions. “Participants can still privately request that the meeting host enable live transcription during the session using the meeting toolbar,” the company adds. “Zoom also supports manual captioning as well as integration with third-party captioning services.”
It's also important to note the captioning feature means Zoom is creating a copy of what's said in your video meetings. We've reached out to the company on how this data is handled, and we'll update the story if we hear back.