Twitter rolled out voice tweets over a year ago now and has taken a lot of heat for the lack of accessibility features. Now, it’s finally rolling out automatically generated captions that appear when you click on the “CC” button. The new feature is only available on iOS, as voice tweets have yet to arrive on Android.
Captions are available in English, Japanese, Portuguese, Turkish, Arabic, Hindi, French, Indonesian, korean and Italian. They will only appear on new voice tweets, as they need to be generated when the tweet is created, Twitter told The Verge.
When voice tweets were first being tested last June, critics immediately pointed out that they should have had captions from the start as required in the US by Federal Law. Twitter then admitted that it didn’t have a dedicated accessibility team and relied on employees to donate additional time for those features. Since then, however, the company has launched teams dedicated to accessibility. The company originally promised to add automated captions by early 2021, but that date obviously slipped a bit.
Twitter promised to improve and expand the service across its products. “Though it’s still early and we know it won’t be perfect at first, it’s one of many steps we’re taking to expand and strengthen accessibility across our service, and we look forward to continuing our journey to create a truly inclusive service,” said Twitter’s global accessibility head Gurpreet Kaur.
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