After testing it for a couple of months, Twitter is finally rolling out the closed captions support in its Android and iOS clients.
This option appears as a CC button in the top right corner of a video that has added subtitles already. Although, it’s a bit glitchy now as some tapping on the button occasionally freezes the video for a while. This will hopefully be fixed and push more video creators to add captions for better access to everyone.
Closed Captions on Twitter
Watching a video without audio isn’t useless, especially if it’s an informative video. So either you should have audio or have the subtitles rolling up to be meaningful. In this pursuit, Twitter tested a closed captions support in its web and iOS clients in April this year, and now rolling out to everyone globally, including the Android clients.
Twitter’s closed captions appear on videos where it’s supported – meaning where the author of that video has added subtitles. If available, users can toggle the CC button appearing on the top right corner to view the captions appearing in sync with the video.
The choice is now yours: the closed caption toggle is now available for everyone on iOS and Android!
Tap the “CC” button on videos with available captions to turn the captions off/on. https://t.co/GceKv68wvi
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) June 23, 2022
These can sometimes be a written description too. To date, people can only enable subtitles for any social media video through their phone’s accessibility settings or enabling them automatically if watching the video with sound off.
But gradually, the social media platforms are adding support for such closed captions to let users consume video with audio off. Twitter’s closed captions are rolling to everyone now, but it still needs some improvement though.
When tested by the people at The Verge, they found the option to be a bit glitchy, resulting in freezing the video when the CC button is turned on. Hopefully, this may soon be fixed, and video authors too would add subtitles to their content for better reach.
