Not all of us enjoy having good hearing. Some of us were born with hearing impairments, some of us might have had issues that resulted in the loss of hearing, which means that when it comes to watching videos, it can be tricky because it means that we cannot hear what is being spoken in the video.
This is why closed captions were invented, where it provides users who are hard of hearing with an alternative way to enjoy videos. That being said, the good news for Twitter users with hearing difficulties is that the platform has finally decided to roll out support for automatic captions. This means the videos uploaded to the platform will be captioned automatically.
According to Twitter, this feature will be made available globally and will cover “most languages”, so depending on your language, your mileage may vary, but hopefully it is covered. However, keep in mind that according to The Verge, Twitter says that automatic captioning will only apply to new videos uploaded to its platform. This means that older videos will not be getting this feature, so that’s a bit of a bummer.
Also, there doesn’t seem to be a way for users to report captioning that might be wrong or inaccurate, but hopefully that will change in the future. While primarily an accessibility feature, captions can also be useful if you want to watch a video but don’t want the sound to play.