Microsoft Teams will soon improve upon it’s already great accessibility features by adding the option for users to view a live transcript and speaker attribution.
So let’s start with speaker attribution.
When closed captioning is turned on, users will now also see the name and avatar of the person speaking next to the caption. This makes it much easier to follow who is talking in the meeting, especially when screen share is enabled or when a student has their camera off.
It’s a pretty nifty feature and definitely helps with tracking things during a meeting.
Live transcription is a more versatile option that is coming soon to Teams, and creates a window (like the participant or chat windows) that captures and shows everything that is said during the meeting.
With the simple click of a button, participants in your Teams meeting will soon be able to read everything said during the conversation. This transcript will also be preserved along with the meeting chat and available for review.
Some immediate benefits of this tool come to mind:
- The ability to review notes to deepen understanding
- Provide students a different way to process information from the lesson
- More support for students with auditory processing challenges
- Another resource to provide students who miss class
When you’re done you can go back into the meeting details and view a page with the transcript, that gives you the option to download a word document version of the transcript (for easier sharing or guided notes, etc.)
Live transcription is a brand new feature and is slowly rolling out. Right now it is only available in scheduled meetings that are not taking place in a specific channel. It should be rolling out to those spaces sometime soon, but we don’t have a firm timeline yet.
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