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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://bigbluebutton.com/docs/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Anyone in a BigBlueButton session can view closed captions. Captions can come from three sources: automatic captions from your microphone, automatic captions from your audio output, or a live stenographer.

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Automatic captions from your microphone

BigBlueButton supports per-user captioning using the browser’s WebSpeech API. When this feature is enabled, select your spoken language from the dropdown when joining audio to have your voice transcribed.
Language drop-down selector in the join audio dialog for choosing a transcription language
Once you start speaking, a CC icon appears next to your name in the “who is talking” indicator.
mceclip4.png
A CC button also appears below the presentation area.
CC button displayed below the presentation area for viewing transcriptions
To view the transcriptions for any user with a CC indicator, select the CC button. You do not need your own audio to be transcribed to view captions for others — when at least one user has their audio transcribed, the CC button appears for everyone. Desktop users can change the detected language during the session by selecting the up arrow on the CC button and choosing a different language — for example, if you switch to speaking Spanish for the rest of the session.
Up arrow on the CC button opening the language selection menu
On mobile devices, the CC button is in the three-dot menu in the top-right corner.mceclip7.pngAutomatic transcription is only available on browsers that support SpeechRecognition (Chrome, Edge, Safari). Other browsers display a warning at the bottom of the join audio dialog.mceclip9.pngPer-user captioning is disabled by default on BigBlueButton Enhanced accounts. To enable it, contact Blindside Networks support.

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Automatic captions from your audio output

You can configure Chrome to caption all spoken audio coming through your speaker. See Google’s Live Caption blog post for setup instructions. These captions are generated by the browser, not BigBlueButton, and do not appear in recordings.

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Stenographer (legacy)

BigBlueButton also supports a live, human stenographer who creates captions in real time. Closed captions only appear when the stenographer has started transcribing — until then, no caption option is available.

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View stenographer captions

Closed Caption icon in the lower-left corner of the presentation area
To start viewing captions, select the Closed Caption icon in the lower-left corner of the presentation area.
Closed caption preferences dialog
Choose your Preferred Language [1], then adjust the Text Colour [2], Background Colour [3], Font Style [4], and Font Size [5]. Select Start [6] to begin viewing captions in real time. Captions appear in the presentation area as the stenographer transcribes: closedcaptionsstudent.gif