When someone asks, "Can we have captions for this meeting?" the answer should be simple. This is on our mind today in particular, after seeing another LinkedIn post asking for assistance with Teams.

But anyone who's worked with Teams, Zoom, Webex, Vimeo, or any number of live or virtual event platforms knows it rarely is simple.

Some platforms build captioning in. Others allow you to add live captions if you know where to look. Often the functionality is there, but buried under settings, browser-only menus, or admin-only permissions. And what works today quietly changes with the next update.

At Line 21, we caption a lot of live events, and we've seen almost every version of this play out. Sometimes the organiser thought captions would appear automatically. Sometimes they enabled them, but in the wrong version of the software. Sometimes they didn't know you had to share a token with the captioner or that the captions wouldn't carry over to breakout rooms.

We're not developers for these platforms. But a core part of our service is up guiding people through their setup. In some cases, we'll go and introduce ourselves when we can't find any resources about captioning and ask if the platform would like to caption!

Examples of Restrictions

A few examples of restrictions, because it helps to be specific:

Zoom

• Captions can be enabled through the web portal only—not through the desktop app.
• If you're using a third-party caption service, you'll need to generate an API token from the meeting settings and share it with them in advance. This can be a time-gated limitation.
• Captions in breakout rooms need to be manually assigned, and will not carry over from the main session automatically.
• Transcripts are saved only if the meeting is recorded, and even then, only if transcription was enabled ahead of time.

Microsoft Teams

• Teams supports live AI-generated captions, plus CART through a “real-time captioning” workflow.
• The availability of features depends on whether you're using Teams for Education, Enterprise, or the free version.
• You must enable transcription and captions separately. One does not imply the other.
• Permissions matter: only certain roles can initiate or assign captioners, and they differ from platform to platform.

Webex

• Automated captions are available in English and a few other languages, but enabling them may require a paid plan or admin approval.
• To connect human-generated captions, Webex relies on third-party integrations through Webex Events or Webinars—not through standard meeting rooms.

Vimeo

• Professional and Enterprise accounts are the only level that can allow third party captioning services, otherwise locked to automated in platform.

Why does this matter?

Because accessibility isn't something people ask for to be polite. It's the way someone participates fully. When captions fail because they weren't set up properly, or the platform wasn't ready it's more than an inconvenience. It tells someone, unintentionally, that the space wasn't made for them.

Most of our clients care deeply about inclusion. They assume, reasonably, that if a tool advertises caption support, it will be easy to turn on. But the truth is: captions have been bolted on to many platforms rather than built in. So we end up walking through back-end settings, toggling options that only show up in browsers, and documenting workflows that aren't in the official help pages.

We've had clients run pre-conference tests just to make sure the captions would appear where they were supposed to. We've sat in technical rehearsals, offering support not just for our own captions, but for the platforms they're appearing on. In some cases, we've even stepped in mid-event to adjust display settings or troubleshoot captions that vanished without warning.

What we want is simple:

• Platforms that make captioning visible and easy to enable.
• Clear support for third-party captioners, with stable API connections and fallback options.
• Attendee controls that allow people to adjust font size, color, or background contrast.
• Transcripts that are easy to access and review later.
• Documentation that speaks plainly—not in layers of jargon or nested admin settings.

Until platforms make this easier, we'll keep doing the quiet work—making sure captions don't just exist, but actually reach the people who need them.