Live Captioning Comes to Google Slides

Google announced, during Accessibility Awareness Month, that it is adding a live captioning feature to its G Suite presentation app Slides. The move is designed to make presentations more accessible to live audiences with hearing deficits. A computer’s built-in microphone--along with speech-to-text capabilities--is used to transcribe the speaker’s words and display them in real time as subtitles. 

Google isn't the first to offer this kind of functionality on its presentation software. Powerpoint and Microsoft both offer similar functionality. Microsoft's Translator live feature is able to translate a presentation into as many as 60 different languages, but instead of putting subtitles on the presentation it transmits them to attendees' phones.