Recently, according to a new report by The Verge, Zoom is bringing the auto-generated captions feature for its free Zoom meetings account users. This service was previously limited to paid Zoom meeting accounts. Notably, the captions feature is available only in English at the moment. However, Zoom, in its official blog has confirmed the expansion of this new feature in other languages in the future. In the official blog, Theresa Larkin, the Product Marketing Manager, Meetings & Chat at Zoom said, “It’s important to us that everyone can successfully connect, communicate, and participate using Zoom.” Theresa further added, “Without the proper accessibility tools, people with disabilities face tremendous barriers when using video communication solutions.” As already mentioned, this AI-powered feature was previously available for paid accounts. It generates captions automatically and provides speaker subtitles on a Zoom meeting or a webinar.
Zoom’s auto-generated captions feature would be beneficial for deaf users
Although the Zoom app is pretty competent, it still had its limitations for deaf users. Without the auto-captions feature, deaf users were left with limited options and had to rely on third-party captioning tools. Zoom has been adding new accessibility features over the past year. Some of which include the screen reading option, allowing multiple videos to be visible simultaneously, allowing a sign language interpreter to be visible all the time, even while the other user on the call is speaking. That’s not all. The addition of other features including keyboard accessibility, spotlighting speakers video, voicemail transcription show the continuous efforts by Zoom to improve its accessibility features over the period of time. To read about accessibility features, you can head over to the official Zoom Accessibility webpage. If you want to experience the newly added Zoom auto-generated captions feature while in a Zoom meeting, you need to ensure you have admin privileges. Once that is confirmed, log in with your credentials on the Zoom web portal. Then tap on the “Account management” option located in the navigation menu. Here, choose “Account settings”, then click on the “meeting” tab. Under the “in meeting (advanced)” menu, you will find the closed captioning toggle. Simply enable this toggle and Voila, you will now have auto-generated captions for Zoom meetings.
