Google is rolling out live caption support in Google Meets in four new languages: French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Earlier this month, Google announced the expansion of live caption support in Google Meet to include four new languages, to serve French and German speakers and users in Brazil (Portuguese), Spain, and Latin America (Spanish). Up until now, live captions were only available in English.
Live captions on Google Meet use Google’s speech-to-text technology to help participants who are deaf or hard of hearing follow the conversation and remain engaged with other participants.
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The feature comes at the end of a year that has marked a major shift in how we work and meet – with a huge number of people worldwide are stuck working from home and seeing their families only through a computer screen. As a result, Google wants to make its tools as inclusive, accessible, and fair as possible with virtual meetings that let everyone take part.
Captions settings have now become “sticky,” meaning that they can be turned on or off during a Meet session, and those preferences – and the language – will be saved for the next ones.
Live captions in Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese have started to roll out to Meet web users (on all Meet editions).
Further to the above, Google is also continuing to update Meet features for large meetings – to help organizations increase their participation and engagement during calls. Breakout rooms and attendance reports are now available for more Google Workspace customers – not only to educators – as is the “hand-raising” feature which is also rolling out to both businesses and educators.
Finally, Google announced that Google Meet would continue to offer calls of up to 24 hours in its free version up until March 31, 2021, for Gmail accounts.