Text on Tap for Zoom

Text on Tap is the streaming platform of Text on Top. A captioner produces the text of your online meeting or conference in real-time, typically on some special amazingly fast keyboard. As you know, you can read along using this Text on Tap website (see this live example), but it is also possible to provide the text as Closed Captions in a Zoom Meeting!

There are two options:
- using the API TOKEN provided by Zoom, allowing the Text on Tap server to inject the text.
- using a separate tool: Text on Tap 2 Zoom

This webpage is about the second option. Text on Tap 2 Zoom has some important benefits over the API TOKEN interface. These are:
- It is REAL-TIME verbatim, without delays.
- Because of this, people can truly PARTICIPATE in the meeting!
- It makes sure the Closed Captions look good on all Zoom clients (Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS)
- It allows the captioner to correct typing mistakes.
- It allows captioners to co-work remotely.

All this is NOT possible, at least not all together, when using the limited API TOKEN interface.

Text on Tap 2 Zoom is the solution!

For whom is this tool?

Although everyone involved in organizing or hosting a Zoom Meeting can use Text on Tap 2 Zoom to make the event accessible, the tool is typically meant for the captioner(s) hired to provide the real-time captions. The captioner shall setup a computer running Zoom (together with the bridge tool) and the 'host' of the Zoom Meeting should "Assign" this Zoom-participant as being the captioner. That's all!

Instructions for the meeting host

In order to provide Closed Captions in Zoom an In Meeting (Advanced) setting must be enabled in the host's Zoom User Account profile. This setting must be set before the Zoom Meeting has started. Once it is set, it works for all future meetings.

The meeting host should do the following (just once):

Sign into Zoom
Go to Settings
Click on In Meeting (Advanced). The long list with settings will scroll down all the way to the Advanced settings.
There you will find the Manual captions switch. Switch it ON.
Make sure both checkboxes below are checked as well.
You may want to switch OFF the Automated captions option. This avoids that peope accidentally read the automated captions instead of the high quality Manual captions produced by the human captioner.
You may want to switch OFF the Full transcript and the Save captions option, as it may contain confidential information!

The host needs to take the following steps (for each meeting):

Start the meeting.
At the bottom of the meeting window, click on the small 'arrow-up' button within the CC/Show Captions button.
Choose Set up manual captioner and then 'Assign a participant to type'. This will basically just show the list of participants.
In case the captioner asked for the API TOKEN, click 'Copy the API token' and then send the copied token to the captioner. You can use the built-in chat function in Zoom, or write an email.
When hovering above the person who is the actual captioner, click on the More... button and choose from the popup menu Assign to type Closed Captions.
Now the captioner can take it from here.

Download Text on Tap 2 Zoom

Text on Tap 2 Zoom can be downloaded here:
Text on Tap 2 Zoom for Windows (v2.7.8.37)
Text on Tap 2 Zoom for Mac (v2.7.8.49)

Text on Tap 2 Zoom screenshot