Back in 2020, one of the features Twitter introduced was the ability for users to post audio tweets. This was a great way for users to tweet their thoughts using their voice as an alternative to text, especially if they’re trying to convey a tone of voice or want to go beyond the Twitter character limit.
However, the problem with voice tweets is that if another person is hearing impaired, they wouldn’t necessarily be able to hear what you said. This poses an accessibility issue, but the good news is that Twitter has since announced that they will now roll out automatic captioning for voice tweets.
We took your feedback and we’re doing the work. To improve accessibility features, captions for voice Tweets are rolling out today.
Now when you record a voice Tweet, captions will automatically generate and appear. To view the captions on web, click the “CC” button. https://t.co/hrdI19Itu6 pic.twitter.com/pDlpOUgV6l
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 15, 2021
Users won’t have to do much work themselves. All they need to do is record a voice tweet like they would normally, and then the other user will just have to click on the CC button to view the captions. However, it seems that this is a feature for the web so if you’re viewing it on mobile, it won’t work.
Also, we can’t really speak to the accuracy of the captions so depending on varying factors like audio quality and accents, it may or may not be as accurate as you would like, but hopefully it’s something that will be improved upon over time.
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