The University is committed to accessible and inclusive experiences. Captioning and accessible digital content benefit many of us and are easy to create. For example, captioning makes content searchable and can support learning for non-Native English speakers, visual learners, and users in noisy or remote environments. We recommend incorporating captioning into your initial planning.

University departments that create audio/video content should include plans for captioning as a part of the original production.

Auto-generated captions are beneficial for many users but are not accurate enough to be ADA-compliant.

• To verify accuracy of captions on your videos, enable captioning and watch the words that are displayed as your video plays.
• If you are using auto-generated captions for live stream events, alert your audience that the information may contain errors.

Auto-generated, live-streaming captions/transcriptions

Zoom

Zoom meeting hosts can enable a machine-generated transcript for their meetings for free

• Select the "Live Transcript" option in the zoom meeting toolbar.
• Choose the "Enable Auto-Transcription" under the Live Transcript section of the pop-up menu.
• Once enabled, users can turn the live transcript on/off for their own view.

MS Teams

Microsoft Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology service generates Teams meeting captions

• To use live captions in a meeting, go to your meeting controls at the top of the screen and select More actions > Language and speech > Show live captions.

Canvas

Videos created or uploaded in Canvas Studio include built-in tools that allow users to automatically generate captions and a full transcript for accessibility and ease of viewing.

Additionally, users can manually upload caption files in either SRT or VTT format directly into Canvas Studio.

MS PowerPoint

PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 can transcribe your words as you present and display them on-screen as captions in the same language you are speaking.

Google Chrome

You can now enable Live Caption in any Chrome browser deployment. Find the Live Caption setting under Chrome > Settings > Accessibility > Live Caption. 

The audio does not need to be in a video. The option to customize the caption size and appearance is available as well. 

YouTube

Live Streaming YouTube videos can include auto-generated captions.