Twitter has started automatic caption for video
Twitter announced Tuesday that it is rolling out automatic captions for videos, a big benefit for accessibility. Twitter has announced that auto-captions will be available worldwide on iOS, Android, and the web in “most languages.”
As a caveat, the automatic subtitles will only appear on fresh videos that have been submitted to Twitter. Still, old videos without subtitles won’t have them. A Twitter spokeswoman tells that “we’re always looking at ways to improve our accessibility features.”
Twitter’s accessibility features have had a bumpy history, but the company has taken strides to improve. Even though the company had a dedicated accessibility team at the time, it came to light that voice tweets were being launched in 2020 without any subtitles. For more than a year after voice tweets were initially introduced, Twitter had two teams dedicated to improving accessibility, and they finally implemented captioning for voice tweets. For its audio room product, Twitter has also integrated live captioning to Spaces.