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Digital accessibility: Captioning

A guide for students, teachers, support staff and anyone else with an interest in digital accessibility

Captions for audio and video

Captions convert audio dialogue and sounds into text that appears on a video, synchronized with audio. They can be added to a pre-recorded video, or added to live videos in real time.

Captions provide equal access and effective communication for deaf and hard of hearing people, which means that captions are essential in allowing full participation. But captions can also enhance the experience for non-native language speakers, people with learning disabilities, and anyone in a noisy environment.

To listen to this page on a PC or laptop, open it in Microsoft Edge and tap the Read Aloud button in the browser address bar or tap the three dots to open the browser menu and select Read Aloud.

Live Caption for audio and video in Chrome

Enable Live Caption in Chrome

  1. On your computer, open the Chrome browser.
  2. Click the customize button in the top-right corner of the browser window (the vertical column of three dots).
  3. Select Settings
  4. Select Accessibility
  5. Turn on Live Caption.

As soon as you enable Live Caption, Chrome will begin downloading speech recognition files, a process that should take only a few seconds. Once it's finished, you should see an automatic transcription whenever someone is talking in video or audio that's being played back through the browser.
If the Live Caption box is in the way of other items on the screen, you can drag and drop it to another spot.

Captions for live videos and events

Live captions convert audio dialogue and sounds into text that appears on a video in real time. They are commonly provided for events and meetings that are streamed over the internet or for in-person meetings.

Google Meet

Turn captions on or off

  1. On your computer, go to Google Meet.
  2. Join a meeting.
  3. At the bottom, click Turn on captions or Turn off captions.

Note: If you record a call, captions will not appear on the recording.

Microsoft Teams

PowerPoint

To read more, see Present with real-time, automatic captions or subtitles.

Zoom

Zoom offers automatically generated captions and live transcripts for every meeting, and meeting hosts are encouraged to turn on live captions in Zoom as an inclusive practice.
Note: The default language for automatic captioning and live transcripts is English. Note: The default English also gives the best speech-to-text results.

Enable captions in a meeting or webinar

Any participant in the meeting can self-enable captions, as they are no longer dependent on the host to enable.

  1.     Join a Zoom meeting.
  2.     Click the Show Captions button.
    If you are using a small screen and don't see the Show Captions menu, look under the More menu, select Captions, then the option Show Captions.
  3.     Captions will appear above the controls toolbar. By default, English is set as the speaking language the captions are generated in.
Change the speaking language for captions

If the speaker is presenting in another language, that speaker can change the language the captions are generated from.

By default, English is set as the speaking language the captions are generated from. If you are presenting in another language, for example French, you can change input language so that captions are generated accurately in French.

  1.     Next to the Show Captions button, click the up caret button .
  2.     Click the Speaking language menu and select the appropriate language the captions should be generated from. Choose from: Chinese (Simplified) Beta, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese Beta, Korean Beta, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian.
  3.     Once selected, captions will be generated based on the language chosen.

Notes: This only changes the language the captions should be generated from. This does not provide a translation into another language other than what the presenter is speaking. Choice of Speaking Language will be saved and applied to future meetings.

View full transcript

You can view a full transcription of your meeting or webinar if live transcription is enabled.

  1. In the meeting controls, click More, then click Captions.
  2. Under 'Your Caption Settings', click View Full Transcript. The Transcript panel will appear, displaying the meeting's/webinar's full transcript.
  3.     (Optional) At the bottom of the Transcript panel, click Save Transcript to save a file of the full transcript.
  4.     (Optional) Use the search bar to search through the transcript.
  5.     (Optional) To hide the full transcript. In the meeting controls:
    1. Click More, then click Captions.
    2. Under 'Your Caption Settings', click Close Full Transcript
    3. In the Transcript panel
    4. In the top right corner, click the down arrow.
    5. Click Close.
Adjust closed captioning size
  1. In the meeting controls, click More, then click Captions.
  2. Under 'Your Caption Settings', click Caption settings. The Accessibility desktop client settings window will appear.
  3. Under 'Closed Caption', move the slider to adjust the caption size..

Captions for pre-recorded video

Panopto

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Stream on Sharepoint

YouTube

Caption editing tools

If you use an AI tool for Automated Speech Recognition you can then make corrections with a caption-editing tool such as CADET or Amara and synchronize the text with your video.

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