TikTok Adds Auto Captions Feature to Improve Accessibility

TikTok announced Tuesday the launch of a new feature designed to make the application more accessible to people who are hard of hearing or deaf.

The company debuted the auto captions feature, which will automatically transcribe the speech from a video when enabled, allowing viewers to read what is being said in the video as an alternative to listening.

TikTok added that the auto captions will support American English and Japanese, with additional languages coming soon.

To use the feature, the users will select the option on the editing page, after uploading or creating a video, then edit the generated text to correct any mistakes before the video is published. To turn the captions off, the user will open the share panel, then tap the captions button to disable them.

The auto-captions are among the several accessibilities features TikTok recently launched such as a text-to-speech feature as well as a feature that allows users to ignore photosensitive content, and warnings users against videos that could trigger photosensitive epilepsy.