How do I add live transcription or manual closed-captioning to a Zoom meeting?

During a Zoom meeting there are three ways the host can offer live captions of the spoken text to participants:

  1. By enabling automatic transcription with closed caption generation
  2. By designating another participant to type closed captions
  3. By manually typing closed captions yourself

These instructions step you through these three options —

Option 1 - Enable automatic transcription with closed caption generation

In a web browser log into your Tufts Zoom account with single-sign on (SSO)

Go to https://tufts.zoom.us and choose "Sign in"

See: How do I sign into my Tufts Zoom account on the web?

In the Zoom account navigation panel, choose Settings.

At the top of the page click  the "Meeting" tab to view meeting settings

Select In Meeting (Advanced)

If you have not changed this setting, you will see it is set to "on" because closed captioning is enabled on all Tufts Zoom meetings by default.

If this setting is off, and you want live automatic transcription or manual closed-captioning, turn it back "on".

To ensure that zoom meetings are accessible to all partipants it is highly encouraged to leave closed-captioning accessible to people in your zoom meetings.

Ensure that both Manual captions and Automated captions are toggled ON

Toggle on Translated captions

Toggle on Full transcript

Those who join your meetings will have the ability to turn on and off closed captioning and transcription as they wish

They can use the (^) next to Show captions to change language settings.

Option 2 - Designate another participant to type closed captions

Click Set up manual captioner in the "Show captions" settings

Menu window

Click "On" under Enable manual captioner and Click Assign a participant to type

Menu window

Option 3 - Manually type closed captions yourself by choosing "I will type" in the "Set up manual captioner" window

For in-depth information about live automatic transcription and close-captioning see the Zoom help guide: Getting Started with Closed Captioning.

To learn how to access the transcript of a Zoom meeting, see: How can I access and share transcripts of Zoom recordings?