Top 8 trends to know for 2026: Insights from our community

What our polls reveal about AI adoption, content and accessibility

Each month this year, Verbit surveyed our community across a range of topics, from how they prefer to engage with content to how confident they feel using and adopting AI. Across thousands of responses, a few clear themes emerged.

• People expect flexibility in how they access information. They want choice and personalization on everything from the media or lectures they’re consuming to how they work with meeting notes or legal transcripts.
• AI adoption is unavoidable, but uneven across organizations. Teams are still at very different stages of readiness and confidence.
• Scale matters especially for institutions responsible for serving large, diverse audiences or professionals working with large amounts of data, files, and caseloads.
• Accessibility is moving from compliance to expectation, impacting everything from education and training tactics to government services to corporate communications.

In short, people don’t just want technology that works. They want technology that adapts to them and to the realities of their industry. Here are some standout takeaways we uncovered to help inform and shape smart decisions in 2026.

Insight #1: Captions are becoming default, not an accommodation or afterthought.

Insight: With over 70% of respondents using captions at least sometimes – and 38% saying always – captions are no longer viewed as an assistive feature. They’ve become a standard preference.

Why it matters for 2026: Captioning isn’t just for people who need accommodations. It’s becoming how people prefer to watch content. Whether viewers are multitasking, on mobile, or watching quietly, captions help. This shifts captioning from a compliance box to a core part of user experience. For media, educators and corporations, this shift signals that every digital experience should be captioned by default – not just legally required ones.

How we can help: As captions become a viewer preference, organizations need to build them into every workflow. Bad captions can harm your experiences, though. With Verbit’s integrations you can start infusing accurate live captions and post-production captions into your daily workflows right away. Verbit’s automatic speech recognition engine, Captivate^TM, offers live AI captions that adapt to your specific content, audience, style and brand voice. We also offer a human review layer for high stakes captioning use cases. Plus, our Legal Capture tool is being used to capture every spoken word with accuracy across the legal, corporate and HR spheres.

Insight #2: Subtitles vs. Dubbing? People want both.

What stood out: There’s no clear “winner.” Nearly equal shares of viewers want subtitles or dubbing, and nearly a third don’t mind either way.

Why it matters for 2026: These findings signal that your content localization or multilingual strategy for 2026 shouldn’t involve picking one method. Viewers want options, and the content leaders of 2026 will offer them.

How we can help: Our newest release, Verbit Dub, offer multiple ways to use AI and professionally dub your content. You can use it to receive dubbed tracks and subtitles in multiple languages or enlist custom voice styles to fit the content, tone, brand and region you’re localizing for. Plus, with access to the Verbit platform you can request dubbing and subtitling in one workflow to make that possible at scale.

Insight #3: Professionals aren’t hesitant about accessibility – they’re overwhelmed.

What stood out: The top challenges are about complexity, not reluctance. Most people want to take action, but they’re just unsure where to begin or how to keep up.

Why it matters for 2026: Organizations don’t just need software. They need clear guidance, scalable solutions and confidence they’ll meet requirements.

How we can help: Verbit has launched a bunch of cost-friendly, scalable solutions and helpful knowledge resources on WCAG, ADA, FCC and Section 508 to make accessibility easier. Working with us also means being assigned to a dedicated human professional committed to your success and a 24/7 help desk to assist you in finding solves and troubleshooting challenges whenever needed. With technology plus human support, compliance should feel more manageable and less daunting.

Insight #4: The workforce is spread across the AI adoption curve.

For the first time this year, the responses were almost perfectly even. Across five levels of confidence, ranging from “expert” to “not confident at all,” each landed around 19-21%.

What stood out: There’s no dominant group. Many people are still skeptical about AI, many are pros, and most fall somewhere in the middle.

Why it matters for 2026: Most organizations have passed the “early adopter” phase. Now the challenge is supporting team members with very different levels of AI experience. Training your teams on AI and onboarding them on effective AI tools to help them work and learn more efficiently will matter as much as the tools themselves in 2026.

How we can help: Easy-to-use AI is at the core of Verbit’s offerings, making it a great place to start. We provide managed implementation support with an onboarding team and sessions to help train you. With access to simple AI tools like Gen.V and AI insights via Legal Visor, Verbit can help teams who range in their confidence levels to feel more secure using AI to their benefit.

Insight #5: AI’s impact isn’t limited to one industry.

Eight industries — from legal to education to finance to media — each landed between 11% and 13% when asked which sector AI will transform the most this year.

What stood out: There’s no clear frontrunner. People see AI touching everything.

Why it matters for 2026: AI strategy shouldn’t be industry-only. It should focus on workflows, internal processes and content experience across departments. The opportunities are organization-wide across all sectors.

How we can help: Verbit offers AI specifically tailored to each industry we serve. For example, Verbit supports attorneys and court reporters across the legal space with offerings like:

• Legal Visor for real-time insights you can act on during depositions and proceedings
• Legal Capture for using legal ASR to transcribe every word in courtrooms securely
• Legal rough drafts and final drafts with certified human transcription
• Court-ready accuracy, including chain of custody safeguards and confidentiality

Insight #6: Live multilingual streaming is moving from ‘cool feature’ into the mainstream.

What stood out: Nearly half of respondents have already tried multilingual livestreams – and most liked the experience.

Why it matters for 2026: Multilingual streaming is no longer an experiment. It’s becoming an expectation, especially for global sports and entertainment.

How we can help: We saw this firsthand. Verbit delivered the live captions for Netflix’s Alvarez vs. Crawford fight, which also offered bilingual broadcast options (English + Spanish) to more than 300M subscribers. We were excited to be a part of this major milestone for streaming – and a sign of what’s next. We’re helping thousands of customers across all verticals with their livestreamed events and media through live captions, multilingual streaming captions and localization technology.

Insight #7: Voice AI inspires both excitement and caution.

Respondents landed mostly in four emotions: excited, concerned, neutral and skeptical.

What stood out: The conversation has shifted from “can AI do it?” to “should AI do it this way?” Ethics, authenticity and voice rights are top of mind.

Why it matters for 2026: Expect organizations in 2026 to prioritize safe, brand-controlled voice generation and localized audio, especially at enterprise scale.

How we can help: Verbit offers voice AI technologies like dubbing with enterprise-grade voice cloning safeguards, multilingual voice generation with consent workflows and brand-aligned voice localization – not generic AI audio alone. Voice innovation and dubbing experimentation shouldn’t be risky for your business or brand, and we’re building and offering it safely.

Insight #8: What people want most from AI is relief from clutter.

What stood out: People aren’t asking for futuristic AI magic. They want help managing information overload.

Why it matters: The most valuable AI tools won’t just create new content — they’ll clean up the noise, summarize, organize, translate and simplify daily work. The future is smarter productivity, not just more output.

How we can help: People want AI to help them with clarity, organization and solutions for backlogs of work. Verbit has AI-driven transcription so you no longer need to take notes. We offer instant summaries and highlights of meetings, trainings or lectures via Gen.V, on-the-spot translation and more. Our tools help you get to the point faster, focus more on the moments that matter and work and learn more efficiently by taking big time-suck items off your plate.

The strategic takeaway for 2026

Across these polls, one theme cuts through everything: Choice is the new standard. People want choice and the flexibility to consume content and work with it in their own way. Brands, businesses, law firms, court reporters, university and government leaders must respond accordingly and lean into AI adoption to thrive.

In 2026, leaders should focus on:
✔ Captioning by default
✔ Multilingual experiences (subtitles and dubbing)
✔ Ethical, brand-controlled voice AI
✔ Accessibility that’s easy to implement
✔ AI to reduce complexity, not add to it

These aren’t “nice to haves” anymore. They’re competitive advantages. We’re excited that our technologies like Legal Visor, Verbit Dub, Gen.V and Captivate^TM’s AI-powered captions, transcripts, can be tools you can lean on to offer users what they increasingly expect – control over how they consume content and personalization to help them excel in their roles and studies.