One Attendee Enabling Closed Captioning, Turns on CC for ALL Attendees | Community
Skip to main content
T
New Member
Ty Schwab
New Member
February 24, 2026
Question

One Attendee Enabling Closed Captioning, Turns on CC for ALL Attendees

  • February 24, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 21 views

We had an odd occurrence during a Webinar last week as one attendee toggled their Closed Captioning on, which turned on CC for everyone on the Webinar. I thought surely that was a bug so I reached out to Zoom Support and they tell me that that is an intended result. If ONE Attendee on a 1000-person Webinar toggles on Closed Captioning, it will start CC for 999 other people. That, in my opinion, should NOT be the case. CC is an individualized experience. We cannot be without it, but the way Zoom has it designed in Webinars, turning it on can cause a significant amount of confusion for other Attendees. Is there a setting somewhere that we can set so that if someone turns on CC, it ONLY turns on CC for THEM? 

      1 reply

      MGSR
      Community Manager
      MGSR
      Community Manager
      February 24, 2026

      Hello ​@Ty Schwab,

      In Zoom Webinars, the behavior you described is currently by design: when any attendee enables Closed Captioning (CC), it becomes visible to all attendees in the webinar. This is different from Zoom Meetings, where CC can be toggled individually by each participant.

      At this time, there is no setting in Zoom Webinars that allows Closed Captioning to be enabled only for the individual attendee who turns it on—enabling CC in a webinar session makes it visible to everyone. 

      T
      New Member
      Ty SchwabAuthor
      New Member
      February 25, 2026

      Thanks. Can you help me understand the benefit of designing it this way for Webinars? For one, CC is an indivudal experience. Sudden CC can also be confusing for some uninitiated users. Finally, making CC behave differently across your platforms is problematic UX. Designing it this way could also further stigmatize those with disability as they often suffer in silence so as to not inconvenience others. 

      Rather than providing folks who need the CC the ability to toggle it on, we are now more inclined to disable CC for the Webinars to avoid confusion and complaints.

        Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
        Copyright © Zoom Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.