Creating & Sharing Accessible Zoom Recordings

One of Zoom's best accessibility features is how easy it is to share meeting recordings with your attendees. Along with the video, viewers get closed captioning, an automated summary, and smart chapters, which add handy markers whenever a new subject is brought up. While these features are AI generated, you can easily edit them. You'll get next steps, the transcript, and the chat, plus the actual video recording. If your camera was on. To get these features, you just need to enable a few specific settings before recording your meeting. Once your recording is ready. Just copy the shareable link and send it out to your participants. This automatically generates a shareable link and the passcode needed to access it. And look at all the extra features your viewers get. You viewers can choose between speaker and gallery views, and download all eight recorded files. By logging into your Zoom account, you can simply click edit to correct any mistakes the AI might have made. Let's look at how to set this up. First, head over to ucsb.zoom.us and click sign in. Log in with your UCSB netted credentials and then click on settings from the left menu panel. Next, click the recording tab at the top of the page. From here, we'll want to make sure a few specific checkboxes are enabled. If you ever need to save recordings locally, you'll want to enable local recording. Below that, make sure internal meeting participants is checked as well. Next, check the box for external meeting participants. You'll also want to enable options to save chat messages from your meetings or webinars, and ensure closed captions are saved as a VTT file. Saving the VTT file is what allows you to edit the captions later. Next, ensure your cloud recordings are enabled for zoom meetings, webinars, and events. Essentially, you're capturing everything under cloud recordings. Make sure to check the boxes for active speaker. Gallery view and shared screens. You should also enable audio only files, which saves a single clean audio track for anyone who just wants to listen. Next, confirm that save chat messages from the meeting or webinar is selected. This ensures you don't lose any of the written conversation. While other settings here are optional. These next few are critical. Make sure save closed Captions as a VTT file is definitely checked. Enabling participants can request host to start cloud recording. Acts as a great safety net just in case you forget to hit the record button yourself. When you record to the cloud, you still have full control to pause or stop at any time. And once the meeting ends, that's where the magic happens. Next, you must enable the options that allow viewers to see the transcript and chat. Then enable cloud recording, sharing and restrict it so only the host can share. However, if you have co-hosts and want them to be able to distribute the link as well, you can adjust this setting to allow both the host and co-host to share. I also recommend enabling require passcode to access shared recordings. This is a great practice, especially if your meeting covers sensitive topics. Finally, look at the setting for when cloud recordings are permanently deleted from the trash. Make sure to turn on the reminder notification so you get a heads up before anything is wiped. By default, cloud recordings expire 30 days after the meeting date, so a completed recording which will look just like this, will remain accessible for exactly 30 days. So when you share the link, remember to let your participants know exactly when the recording expires. While 30 days is our campus default set by the administrator, you can always remind your viewers that they are welcome to download the recording files to keep permanently. To share your video, navigate to your recordings and transcripts. Then find the specific meeting you want to share. Then click copy Shareable link. As you mentioned earlier, this will automatically generate a unique link and password for your viewers to access the recording. The system will also display a warning showing exactly when the file is scheduled for permanent deletion, which in this specific case is in just two days. So again, if you or your viewers want to save the entire package, simply click download in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. When your viewers click the link you provided. They'll be taken to a clean landing page that looks exactly like this. After hitting enter, they will be prompted to input the password that you provided in your email. Once inside, they'll have access to the full suite of meeting assets. This includes the chat log with all shared links, an interactive audio transcript that scrolls as the video plays, and an AI generated summary of the conversation. They'll also see smart chapters that mark the start of new topics, along with the next steps section detailing action items and responsibilities. And that is how you share a fully accessible digital recording of your Zoom meeting.