Zoom Adding Automatic Closed Captions to All Free Accounts This Fall

Zoom will be adding automatic closed captions to all free accounts later this year as it continues to make its service more accessible to users. Recently, Zoom has announced that the company is continually committed to providing accessibility features to its service. As such, all free account holders will have access to automatic closed captioning later this year.

However, given the timespan needed before a wide launch of the feature is set, Zoom will be offering immediate access to users who require the feature. A Google Form request has been provided by the company. Once the form has been filled and submitted, Zoom has said it will send a confirmation email with additional details.

Zoom’s automatic captioning has been offered to paid account users for quite some time. However, unless users subscribe to the company’s paid premium plans, transcriptions and captions must be manually added by the call’s host. Of course, third-party services can also provide captions for video calls as well.

On top of enabling manual closed captions and the eventual automatic transcriptions, Zoom’s accessibility options also include keyboard accessibility, pinning or spotlighting interpreter video, screen reader support, and other customizable settings.

Zoom has seen a large rise in users since the advent of the pandemic and a surge in work-from-home conditions. Its competitors such as Google Meet and Skype also offer live close captions to its users, emphasizing accessibility towards it install base.

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