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Captions have been added to Twitter’s voice tweets

Despite having launched voice tweets in June 2020, Twitter has yet to make the functionality available for Android users though perhaps that’s a good thing.

We say that because, while voice tweets are a good idea, they aren’t exactly accessible to everybody, especially folks who have hearing problems. That has changed as Twitter has added captions to voice tweets.

The captions are generated automatically and from the tweets we’ve seen with captions, the functionality is made possible by Microsoft and you can toggle them on or off with the CC button in the top righthand corner of the audio block.

Twitter’s own tweet doesn’t actually use a voice tweet (probably because only iPhones can create voice tweets) so for an example we have to showcase a capture of a voice tweet.

But as we mentioned, the fact that voice tweets aren’t on Android is likely a good thing.

According to IDC forecast data, in 2020 the Android market share sat at 84.1 percent compared to Apple’s iOS which sat at 15.9 percent. This means that Twitter can test solutions out with a small group of public users before rolling them out to a wider audience.

Given the fact that there are more iterations of Android in the wild (including the kaleidoscope of smartphones and tablets the OS runs on) accounting for all those combinations is likely very tricky and that’s before we through browsers and PCs into the mix as well.

Just imagine the backlash from millions of users if voice tweets launched without accessibility options for those with hearing disabilities.

The other thing keeping voice tweets and captions for those tweets confined to iOS does, is it allows Twitter to improve on what is still a fledgling feature. For instance while browsing for an example of a tweet with captions we spotted one where the user literally says “Good morning” and the captions failed to recognise what the user said.

“Though it’s still early and we know it won’t be perfect at first, it’s one of many steps we’re taking to expand and strengthen accessibility across our service, and we look forward to continuing our journey to create a truly inclusive service,” head of global accessibility at Twitter, Gurpreet Kaur told The Verge.

Here’s hoping Twitter launches voice tweets with the necessary functionality to all users soon.

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