Making meetings & videos accessible to all

Allowing everyone to participate

Video conferencing services such as Teams and Zoom have been instrumental at keeping us connected througout the pandemic. However, they can be problematic for members of our community with hearing impairments, non-native English speakers and people who process written information better than audio.

Transcripts and captions are critical tools to make these services accessible and more inclusive, and now they are free and available on both platforms.

UNSW strongly encourages hosts of webinars, meetings and live events to ensure that live transcripts are made available, so everyone can participate fully.

Microsoft Teams live captions

Teams has built-in closed captioning that can be turned on from the meeting controls for a meeting or live event.

Any attendee of a Teams meeting or event can view the live captions in real-time.

Note: Teams does not save the captions for accessing after the meeting or event.

• View the instructions for enabling Microsoft Teams live captions

Zoom live transcript and closed captions

Zoom provides a live transcription service that can be enabled by the host and any participants can view the captioning to easily follow the conversations.

The host of the webinar must always enable the live transcript function first so that it is available for attendees to turn on.

As an alternative to the free Zoom live transcript service, a paid closed captioning service can be managed by third party software or manually.

Third party captioning services should be paid for by the Zoom account holder.

Visit the links below to see step-by-step guides for third party closed captioning.

• View the instructions for enabling Zoom live transcripts and closed captions
• Enabling and managing closed captioning and live transcription - Zoom Help Center
• Integrating a third party closed captioning service - Zoom Help Center

Other resources