Skype will soon live-caption video calls

Skype is getting live captioning and subtitles to help people who are deaf or hard of hearing. The news follows an earlier announcement that PowerPoint is also getting real-time captions and subtitles, and both features will rely on the company’s artificial intelligence work. The Skype option is available by pressing the “more,” or (+), button during a call and turning subtitles on. This can be set as a default, too.
 
Live captions and subtitles will auto-scroll during a call, although eventually, users will be able to scroll through captions in a side window if they don’t want to see words overlaid on their call. The captions and subtitles will be available through Skype version 8 on Android, iOS, Linux, Mac, and Windows, as well as Skype for Windows 10, although the rollout might take a while. The company also says it’s planning to roll out translations for more than 20 languages, but that’ll happen in the “coming weeks.”

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