Zoom allows free users to automatically generate captions

Back in February, Zoom announced that it would allow free users to use automatic captions generation to make their video conferencing platform more accessible to people with disabilities. As originally promised, the feature became available after nearly nine months, the company posted on its blog. 

“It is important to us that everyone can successfully connect, communicate and participate using Zoom. Without proper accessibility tools, people with disabilities face major barriers to using video conferencing solutions, ” explains Zoom's Head of Marketing and Products,  Theresa  Larkin, noting that enabling free subtitle generation for free users is one of the company's main missions. 

In order for subtitles to be displayed in video conferences, the administrator needs to log in to the Zoom web portal, go to "account management" in the navigation menu, then click on "account settings", then "meeting " and finally turn on automatic subtitle generation in "meeting (advanced)” section. 

Namely, the company has so far offered automatic subtitle generation only to those users who opted for the paid Zoom package, which caused a lot of criticism, because deaf and hearing-impaired people could not normally use the video conferencing platform, but had to pay or manage others ways, writes  The Verge. 

Despite this, the fact is that Zoom is actively working to improve the user experience, especially when it comes to users with disabilities, so over the past year, they have added support for a screen reader for the blind. In addition, they made it possible to "pin" multiple videos at the same time, which proved to be extremely useful for deaf and hard of hearing people, who have since been able to follow the speaker and at the same time have a sign language interpreter on the side. 

By: Helen B.