What are CART captions in Microsoft Teams? Options explained
CART captions in Microsoft Teams refer to professional human-powered real-time transcription displayed during a meeting, distinct from Teams' built-in automatic live captions. Teams' native "live captions" use AI speech recognition, while CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) delivers 99%+ accuracy from a trained captioner for accommodation requests, legal proceedings, and high-stakes events. Teams also exposes "caption options" settings for language, profanity filtering, and speaker attribution on its built-in captions.
What is CART captioning?
CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) is live captioning performed by a professional captioner who listens to the audio and types what is spoken in real time. CART is the gold standard for:
- Employee accommodation requests under the ADA
- Legal and regulatory meetings requiring verbatim records
- Commencements, board meetings, and public hearings where accuracy is critical
- Content with specialized terminology (medical, legal, technical) that AI often mishandles
CART captions typically achieve 99% or higher accuracy, compared to roughly 90–95% for AI-only live captions in ideal conditions (lower with crosstalk, accents, or poor audio).
See our complete guide to live captions and CART for higher education for broader context on when CART is required.
Microsoft Teams built-in live captions vs CART
| Feature | Teams built-in live captions | Professional CART |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Microsoft AI (automatic) | Human captioner (via third-party service) |
| Accuracy | ~90–95% in good conditions | 99%+ |
| Availability | Most Teams plans with live captions enabled | Requires booking a CART provider |
| Best for | General meetings, informal use | Accommodations, legal, public meetings |
| Customization | Language, profanity filter, speaker labels | Full control over terminology via prep materials |
Teams built-in captions are useful for everyday meetings but are not a substitute for CART when an employee or participant has requested a qualified communication access accommodation.
What are "caption options" in Teams?
When you enable live captions in a Teams meeting, the Caption options menu (click the Captions button, then the gear icon) lets you adjust:
- Spoken language for transcription (Teams supports multiple languages depending on your plan)
- Profanity filtering (mask or show profane words)
- Speaker attribution (label captions with participant names when available)
- Caption language for translated captions (on supported plans)
These settings apply to Teams' automatic captions only. They do not configure third-party CART delivery.
To turn on built-in captions during a meeting:
- Click More (three dots) in the meeting toolbar
- Select Language and speech → Turn on live captions
- Open Caption options to adjust language and display settings
When Teams built-in captions are not enough
Consider professional CART or hybrid AI + human captioning when:
- A participant has requested a communication access accommodation
- The meeting involves legal, medical, or financial terminology
- Multiple speakers talk over each other (council chambers, panel discussions)
- The meeting will be archived as a public record (government, board meetings)
- Compliance requirements specify human-verified accuracy (some RFPs and institutional policies)
Our professional CART captioning services cover commencements, legal proceedings, and events where accuracy cannot be compromised.
How to add CART captions to a Teams meeting
Microsoft Teams does not natively embed third-party CART the way Zoom's manual captioning API allows direct caption injection. Common approaches:
Option 1: Personal caption viewer link
Recap delivers CART captions to a personal viewer URL that participants open on a second screen, tablet, or phone alongside the Teams meeting. This works on any platform, including Teams, Webex, and in-person events without videoconferencing.
Recap's real-time closed captioning services support this workflow today for Teams meetings.
Option 2: Teams live captions as a baseline, CART for accommodated participants
Some organizations enable Teams auto-captions for general participants while providing a dedicated CART viewer link to the employee who requested accommodation.
Option 3: Post-meeting transcript import
After a Teams meeting, Recap can import the recording via Microsoft Graph API and generate a searchable transcript with speaker identification, AI summary, and edited captions for the archive. This addresses post-meeting accessibility even when live CART was not used.
Post-meeting transcript workflows for Teams
Teams cloud recording (on eligible plans) produces a recording that can be processed for:
- Searchable transcripts with timestamps
- Edited closed captions for the archived video
- AI-generated meeting summaries
- Export to DOCX, SRT, or VTT for records management
This complements live captioning: live CART or Teams captions serve participants during the meeting; post-meeting processing ensures the archive is accessible and searchable.
Compare with our Zoom live captioning integration, which supports native caption injection directly into the Zoom meeting interface.
Choosing the right caption approach for Teams
| Scenario | Recommended approach |
|---|---|
| Informal internal meeting | Teams built-in live captions |
| Employee accommodation request | Professional CART via viewer link |
| Public government meeting | Hybrid AI + human CART or professional CART |
| Archived training content | Post-meeting AI transcription + human review |
| Multi-platform organization (Zoom + Teams + Webex) | Unified captioning vendor with cross-platform support |
Recap supports live captioning for Zoom and Webex with native relay, plus viewer-link CART for Teams and in-person events. Book a demo to discuss your Teams captioning workflow, or see live captioning for employee accommodations.