Google’s YouTube on Thursday expressed, all YouTube creators are now available that enable automatic captions to live, to make it easier to use. Previously, this feature was only available for channels with at least 1,000 subscribers.
Real-time automatic captioning is currently only available for English live broadcasts, but the company said that it plans to expand the feature to all 13 supported automatic captioning languages in the coming months.
In addition, YouTube said it will launch automatic translation of subtitles in supported languages on Android and iOS later this year. Currently, this feature is only available on the desktop. The company also plans to begin testing the ability to search for subtitle records on the mobile terminal to help users find specific keywords. This will also be achieved later this year.
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YouTube is also testing the ability to add multiple audio tracks to videos, which can help provide multilingual audio for international audiences, as well as descriptive audio for people who are blind or low-vision. The company said it hopes to launch this feature more widely in the next few quarters.
More technology companies have added subtitles to their platforms because they have expanded their accessibility efforts. At the end of last year, Instagram added automatic subtitles to IGTV, and then expanded the feature to Stories in May. TikTok launched automatic subtitles in April, and Twitter turned on automatic subtitles on iOS after the first voice tweet launched last year was criticized as a feature unavailable for disabled people.