Twitter turned on automatic captions for voice tweets in iOS on Thursday after criticism that the feature was not accessible to people with disabilities.
“We listened to your feedback and are now working on it.” Twitter announced captions for voice tweets today to improve accessibility features. Captions will now automatically appear when you record a voice tweet. Click the “CC” button to view captions online.
Twitter started testing voice tweets last year, but many users criticized it for not considering all users’ needs before releasing them.
The company tweeted that it was sorry for testing voice tweets without support for visually impaired, hard of hearing, or deaf people in June. It was a mistake to launch this experiment without this support. Accessibility shouldn’t be an afterthought.” The company stated that it was working to make voice tweets more accessible by making transcription available in September.
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Gurpreet Kaur, Twitter’s global accessibility head, stated in a statement that “Though it is still early and it will not be perfect at the beginning, it’s one among many steps we’re making to expand and strengthen accessibility throughout our service and we look forwards to continuing our journey towards creating an inclusive service.”
Voice tweets are not yet available for Android.