Free Closed Captioning for On-Line Virtual Meetings

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Google Meet and Microsoft Teams provide free live closed captioning for on-line meetings. Microsoft Teams offers transcriptions only in English, and Google Meet can caption English, French, German, Portuguese (Brazil) and Spanish (Mexico and Spain). Now Zoom will provide free closed captioning for on-line meetings as well.

Zoom recently announced in a blog article that “we (Zoom) are working towards making automatic closed captioning —what we refer to as “Live Transcription”— available to all of our users in the fall of 2021. To help free account holders who require Live Transcription, starting today (02/24/2021) and up until the feature’s broader release, we will also be offering automatic closed captioning to meeting hosts upon request. To sign up, please enter your information in this form.”

This free closed captioning service is in addition to the Zoom Meetings accessibility features already offered to all users such as manual closed captioning, keyboard accessibility, pinning or spotlighting interpreter video, screen reader support, and a range of accessibility settings. For more information on Live Transcription please visit the Zoom support page.

According to their website, Google Meet allows participants to follow along in real time with automated live captions powered by Google’s speech recognition technology. Additional information about this feature is available at Google Meet Closed Captioning.

According to their website, Microsoft Teams can detect what’s said in a meeting and present real-time captions. And, if you've turned on the new meeting experience, your captions will include speaker attribution—so you'll see not only what's being said, but who's saying it. For additional information about Microsoft Teams closed captioning capabilities see Teams Closed Captioning.

SUMMARY

Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom are offering free closed captioning for on-line meetings. To see more details on the accessibility features offered by Zoom and how to use them, please see the Happy Meetings for Everyone blog from Zoom.

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In addition to effective and compassionate communication, people with limited hearing are protected under the ADA laws for accessibility in Title II and Title III facilities. If you observe a facility that is not ADA compliant and you would like to know how to proceed, please see the link at What To Do When A Building Is Not ADA Compliant or Accessible.

ADA Inspections Nationwide, LLC, offers ADA/ABA/FHA accessibility compliance inspections for buildings and facilities, as applicable to the different laws, and expert witness services with respect to ADA/ABA/FHA laws for building owners, tenants and managers. Also, ADAIN offers consulting for home modifications as a CAPS consultant for people wishing to age in place in their homes. For a complete list of services please see ADAIN Services.

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