Google has made it official to expand its real-time caption feature to Chrome browser on the desktop that will help make the web more accessible.
The feature works across social and video sites, podcasts and radio content, personal video libraries (such as Google Photos), embedded video players, and most web-based video or audio chat services.
“These captions in Chrome are created on-device, which allows the captions to appear as the content plays without ever having to leave your computer. Live Caption also works offline, so you can even caption audio and video files saved on your hard drive when you play them in Chrome,” Google said in a statement on Thursday.
The feature currently supports English and is available globally on the latest release of Chrome on Windows, Mac, and Linux devices and will be coming soon to ChromeOS.
For Android devices, Live Caption is already available for any audio or video on mobile.
Google in December announced Live Caption support in its video collaboration app Meet for four additional languages — French, German, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish (Spain and Latin America).
Google Meet uses speech-to-text technology to provide live captions in meetings which help participants who may be deaf or hard of hearing follow along and stay engaged.
With a single tap, Live Caption automatically captions speech on your device and soon on Chrome on desktop.
The Live Caption feature is similar to Live Transcribe. But, Live Transcribe listens to what people around are saying and prints it out on a phone’s display, while Live Caption processes the audio from videos, podcasts, and other sources to provide you with real-time captions.
