Automatic Captions in Zoom

Zoom has introduced live auto-captioning to their sessions, and DoIT has enabled it for our NIU license. It takes just a few steps for an individual to enable.

This does not replace having a human caption for students who have a documented disability. There are advantages, however, to having the ability to provide captions for everyone, regardless of disability.

Make Automatic Captions Available

To make auto-captions available for meetings you schedule:

1. Login at niu-edu.zoom.us
2. Go to Settings
3. Go to In Meetings (Advanced)
4. Click the toggle to enable Closed Captioning
5. Click the checkbox to enable live transcription

After live transcription is enabled for your account, you can turn on auto-captions within a specific session that you schedule.

Enable Automatic Captions within a Session

To enable auto-captions within a session:

1. Click the Live Transcription button in the toolbar at the bottom of the session (if you don't see a button there, make sure you have enabled them in your account settings)
2. Click the button to Enable Live-Transcription

Captions will automatically appear for the host and participants. Individual users can hide them by clicking the Live Transcription (the host should click the arrow in the Live Transcription button) and choosing Hide Transcription. From the same menu, you can also view the full transcript, which opens a side panel where you can download the transcript.