Chrome Accessibility Update: Live Captions Now Built In

 

There have been quite a few exciting new updates to Google Chrome recently. One of my favorites is the ability to enable live captions. According to the folks at Chrome Unboxed, the live captions are the product of machine learning and are done on the fly, in real time. At this time, English is the only language supported. This has not been fully released yet, but full release is on the horizon. If you are updated to the most recent version of Chrome, you can get a head start by enabling it via chrome://flags.

Start by typing chrome://flags in the Omnibox and hit enter/return. 

In the search bar that appears at the top, search for Captions. In the results, click the button that says Default and switch to Enable. You'll be prompted to relaunch Chrome and when it restarts, you'll have the ability to turn on the captions in the settings with a variety of other customizable options.

Once enabled, go to your Chrome settings. On a PC or Mac, access this by clicking three dots in the top right corner of Chrome. On a Chromebook, click the bottom right corner of the screen. With the settings open, click Advanced.

After clicking Advanced, scroll down and click Accessibility.

Scroll down to the section called Captions and click it.

You will see a toggle to turn on Live Caption. Below, you'll see customizable options for the appearance of the captions.

Take a look at the video below to see what this looks like.