Options for including closed captions on your events.
At the moment, Crowdcast doesn't have native closed captioning built-in, but we are working on it. We know how important it is for greater accessibility and are busy making some big upgrades, although we don't have a timeline we can share as of now. But good news! Live Captions are now available for Google Chrome users. (Not a Chrome user? Scroll down.)
When enabled, Live Captions automatically appear in a small, moveable box at the bottom of your browser when you’re watching or listening to a piece of content where people are talking.
Words appear after a slight delay and captions will even appear with muted audio or your volume turned down. Live Captions can be enabled in the latest version of Chrome by going to Settings, then the “Advanced” section, and then “Accessibility.”
(If you’re not seeing the feature, try manually updating and restarting your browser.) When you toggle them on, Chrome will quickly download some speech recognition files, and then captions should appear the next time your browser plays audio where people are talking.
Please note, this setup is on the viewer's end; the captions are not displayed within the video feed directly. You can read more about this, including a video explainer, directly from Google.
Captions are just for the viewer who enables them and captions are not displayed within the video feed directly.
At the time of this writing, Google Chrome remains the only browser with built-in live captioning available. We know how important closed captions are for greater accessibility, and we are working on implementing this. If you're not a Chrome user or prefer not to use Live Caption in Chrome, here are some other suggestions:
Closed captions could be set up by using third-party software like OBS connected to RTMP Studio.
Hosts can direct their attendees through the Call-to-Action button toward transcription services like Otter.ai or Web Captioner.
If you're attending an event, try setting up these services first. You will need to split your screen between the event window and the transcription or use two monitors. Otter.ai is free for up to 600 minutes of transcription, and Web Captioner is entirely free!
Hosts may also choose to have a typist as a co-host actively typing while sharing their screen in the event.
Hosts can also connect Zoom to Crowdcast via RTMP, and use Zoom's closed captions which display on-screen to Crowdcast attendees.