Zoom: Captions

Last Modified on 07/25/2024 1:50 pm EDT

Zoom supports both CART captioning (in which a professional captioner attends the meeting and types captions in real time) and ASR (computer-generated) captioning.

Turn on CART Captioning

Before you start, you will need to:

  • Book a CART captioning service for a meeting or webinar in advance of the event
  • Designate a host or alternative host role of the Zoom meeting or webinar you are captioning

The third-party captioning company should provide you with instructions on how to have their captioner join your meeting and start the captions. However, in the case you don't have those instructions on hand, the steps listed here should follow closely to what most companies recommend.

Shortly before the event start time, the meeting or webinar host should:

  1. Start the meeting.
  2. Wait for the captioner to join.
  3. In the meeting controls bar, click the  Up arrow next to  Show Captions or  More  > Captions.
  4. Click Set Up Manual Captioner.
  5. Set "Enable manual captioner" to On.
  6. According to the instructions the captioning service provided in advance, EITHER:
    • Click Assign a participant to type and choose the captioner from the Participant list (which enables them to type directly into Zoom) OR
    • Click Copy the API token and share it with the captioning service using your pre-arranged method. Click the Subtitles available notice that indicates the caption feed has started and choose Show subtitles to display captions to participants.

Image of captioning tools on Zoom

Warning: Do not refresh your screen or end the meeting after copying and sharing the API token! A new, unique token is created each time you start a meeting, even if you use the same meeting link.

Turn on ASR Captioning

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) captions and transcripts are available for any Zoom meeting hosted by a Bryn Mawr College Zoom account. As a default setting, any participant can turn on captions for a meeting. To turn on captions for a meeting, do the following:

  1. Start the meeting.
  2. In the meeting controls bar, click   Show Captions or More > Captions > Show Captions.
  3. Select your language (English is the default) and click Save.

Once one participant turns on captions, all participants will be able to see them. Click Show Captions or More > Captions > Show Captions to do so. Click Hide Captions or More > Captions > Hide Captions to turn them back off.

Captions can also be viewed as a transcript by all participants. This can be accessed by clicking the  up arrow icon next to Show/Hide Captions. From there, select Captions > View Full Transcript (or Captions > Hide Full Transcript to make it go away). 

Tip: If you want a saved record of the transcripts, be sure to record the meetings to the cloud. That way, you will be able to access the recording and transcript in Panopto.

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