A Twitter closed captions button is now available to all users in both iOS and Android apps, following a successful test. The rollout will, however, likely cause some confusion …
Background
As we’ve previously noted, Twitter doesn’t have the best track-record when it comes to accessibility features.
When Twitter introduced features like voice tweets and even Spaces, the company was widely criticized for not thinking about accessibility since both features didn’t have captions at first.
The company later added captions for its live audio feature, Spaces, and followed up with automatically generated captions for all videos.
Captions weren’t that… accessible in the past. At one point, the option was buried within accessibility settings, so you had to know it was there. Engadget notes that things didn’t improve greatly from there.
In the past, you’ll only see the CC button on the web and for subtitles on mobile if your sound is turned off. Further, captions automatically disappear when you expand a video, since doing so enables sound playback
Twitter closed captions
Automatic captions are better than nothing, but no substitute for proper transcription embedded by creators in the form of closed captions, which can be toggled on and off. Twitter has now rolled out an update which will make switching on captions as easy as tapping a button.
The choice is now yours: the closed caption toggle is now available for everyone on iOS and Android! Tap the “CC” button on videos with available captions to turn the captions off/on.
This follows testing that began back in April.
Confusion likely
The CC button will appear only when a video has embedded closed captions. It won’t be shown as a means of switching on automatic captioning.
This is likely to cause some confusion, with some thinking their app hasn’t been updated when watching a video without closed captions, and others wondering why the button only appears intermittently.
Photo: Marten Bjork/Unsplash
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