Zoom offers auto-generated captions for free accounts

Zoom is delivering on its promise to add auto-generated closed captions to all of Zoom's free meeting accounts to make its service more accessible, the company announced Monday. Subtitles are only available in English, but the company says it plans to expand to other languages ​​in the future.

"It's important to us that everyone can successfully connect, communicate, and participate using Zoom," said Theresa Larkin, the company's product marketing manager of meetings & chat. "Without the proper accessibility tools, people with disabilities face tremendous barriers when using video communication solutions." Earlier Zoom had offered AI-powered live transcription only for its paid accounts, drawing criticism from accessibility advocates who noted that the ubiquity of Zoom calls during the pandemic left deaf users with limited options. Without automatic captions, Zoom meeting hosts had to use a third-party caption service or manually add their own captions.

Over the past year, the company has added more accessibility options, including support for screen readers and allowing multiple videos to be viewable at the same time, allowing one sign language interpreter to be visible at all times, even when another caller is speaking.

To enable captions for Zoom meetings, an account owner or user with administrator privileges can log into the Zoom web portal and then search for "account management" in the navigation menu. Choose "account settings", then click on the "meeting" tab. Under "in a meeting (advanced)", change the captions option to enable it.