Twitter puts CC button to test for accessible deactivation of video captions

Video captions or no captions, it’s now easier to choose for some of you on iOS, and soon on Android.

On videos that have captions available, we’re testing the option to turn captions off/on with a new “CC” button. pic.twitter.com/Q2Q2Wmr78U

— Support (@Support) April 22, 2022

December last year, we saw Twitter launch auto-generated captions on videos that can make content more accessible for the deaf and hearing impaired. It is available on the web, iOS, and Android while boasting 30 languages, such as English, Arabic, Thai, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, and Japanese. Now, the platform has decided to make the “CC” button available, allowing users to turn the captions of the videos on and off whenever they want.

“Video captions or no captions, it’s now easier to choose for some of you on iOS, and soon on Android,” announced the Twitter Support team in a post on April 23, confirming the feature. “On videos that have captions available, we’re testing the option to turn captions off/on with a new ‘CC’ button.”

From the video posted by the team alongside the announcement, a video is shown with the CC button placed on the upper right side of the screen. It will join the other accessibility features rolled out by Twitter recently, including the long-time-coming ALT badge that allows input for image descriptions. Twitter already has had it since 2016, but using the earlier feature process was truly difficult. But after some backlash Twitter received due to some things related to its accessibility features and the revelation that the company lacks a dedicated accessibility team, it started to create one in September 2020, allowing it to make its technology more accessible for people with disabilities.

Aside from adding to the list of accessibility features, the CC button will be one of the new features already released and still being explored by Twitter. For some months now, the public has received lots of revelations from various reverse engineers and leakers about the unannounced tools and features the company is improving like the Vibe status, Edit button, unmentioning capability, Collaboration, and many more. And given that the social media giant already has its own accessibility team (and with the constant pressure from the criticisms of Elon Musk), we can certainly expect so much more from it in the future.