Twitter is making it easier to utilize closed captions in the app. How? By adding a new ‘CC’ button on caption-enabled videos, that’s how! Relatively new to Twitter’s generally all-text format, video Tweets have slowly risen over time, with closed-captioning options helping enrich the viewing experience for some users. This update could expand on that element more, allowing Twitter to further capitalize on new opportunities.
Enable Subtitles
Based on this clip, users will soon see this new ‘CC’ option in the top right of the video player screen to switch on captions in certain clips. The new button will essentially be dual-purpose, acting as a sort of toggle, while also informing you of which clips actually support closed-captioning. Function and operation-wise, Twitter’s new CC option are closely similar to the one YouTube uses, save for the placement and caption accuracy, of course.
Twitter has been working to improve its accessibility options over the past year. Back in March, Twitter updated the protocols for its alternate text description display, while it added auto-captions for all video uploads last December. This sort of gives us the idea that all clips would have captions, meaning that the new CC option should likely be available for all clips and not just those ‘where captions are available’.
On the topic of accessibility, not all platforms focus on improving accessibility options for the benefit of impaired users, which does put Twitter in a bit of a good position seeing as how it shows concern towards its more ‘unique’ users. We’re not saying that this will get Twitter millions of new followers, but what it can do is potentially get Twitter more support from users and groups that better represent the impaired. Though not a lot, specialty support groups can still make for notable audiences, and aligning with user causes often does lead to better engagement since these users would be more comfortable interacting with the app.
With video being one of the newer content formats on Twitter, it’s good to see that they’re giving it at least some attention. This should help Twitter more easily refine and upgrade its video offers in the future, which is something it’ll likely do given the direction of current trends.
The Wrap
Again, while it may seem fairly minor, it’s still a good addition and will no doubt come in handy for a lot of users. While captions aren’t available as an option on all clips just yet, with the combination of auto-captions and the new CC button, they might soon be. When that happens, there will definitely be more capacity to view all Twitter videos accompanied by text, improving accessibility and enabling more users to engage with Tweets.
The new CC button is first being tested on iOS before making its way to Android.
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