Twitter has announced that it’s working on a new feature that will enable automated captions on video and audio.
The feature is being developed as part of the social media platform’s aim to become more accessible for those with disabilities. Dalana Brand, Twitter’s Vice President of People Experience and its Head of Inclusion and Diversity, alongside Kayvon Beykpour, its Product Lead, made the announcement on the platform’s blog last Wednesday.
In the announcement, Brand and Beykpour stated:
“We’ve partnered with external groups and over the coming months we’ll be gathering feedback from people with disabilities via interviews, surveys, and doing remote usability studies of new prototypes.”
The announcement also revealed Twitter has created two new teams to focus on the development of the feature: The Accessibility Center for Excellence and The Experience Accessibility Team.
Automated captions follow the release of voice tweets, which were introduced in June. Voice tweets did, however, receive some criticism due to the lack of support for users with disabilities, and so the creation of these new designated teams and the platform’s desire to gain feedback from such users will hopefully allow a better reception of this new tool when it’s rolled out.
The feature is set to be added early in 2021, and will lay the foundations for a long-term plan that aims to invest ‘broadly in media accessibility’. Updates on this feature, and other developments in Twitter’s accessibility, can be found on its designated account, @TwitterA11y.
Accessibility is important for all platforms and businesses to consider in order to reach a wider scope of people and allow all users to engage with content. Here at Engage Web, we often create videos for ourselves and our clients, and strive to include captions wherever possible. If you need help in creating engaging, accessible content, why not contact our team today?
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