If you are showing a series of presentations using Google Slides and would like to add closed captions to it for those who have difficulty in hearing, you may be glad to know that Google has announced automated closed captioning for Slides. The new capability works by picking up on your spoken presentation and then transcribing it as captions on your slides in real time.
With the automated captioning feature, you will be able to tap on the “CC” button in the navigation box or press Ctrl + Shift + c in Chrome OS or Windows (⌘ + Shift + c in Mac), provided a microphone is connected to your machine. This will instantly add closed captions to your presentation without having to pause with each slide just to let your audience catch up with you. The real-time captions will show up at the bottom of the display.
Google said the new feature currently supports U.S. English only and works on a laptop or desktop computer with the Chrome browser. The feature will start rolling out worldwide next week and Google plans on adding more language support in the future. Like Google's other speech recognition-enabled services, the closed captions are powered by machine learning and largely depend on the speaker's accent, voice modulation, and intonation, according to the search giant.
While the feature mainly benefits those who have hearing disabilities, Google said it also helps those who can hear normally but can't grasp a speaker's verbal presentation in a noisy environment.
