Up until now, TikTok users who wanted to add captions had to undergo the painful manual process. But it was a struggle worth undergoing since captions help videos get more accessibility on the platform.
Today, though, TikTok is adding automatic captions, allowing creators and all users to generate subtitles for their videos automatically.
The new feature will also make it easy for “people who are hard of hearing or deaf better use and enjoy TikTok,” TikTok said. Users will be able to read as well as listen to content. This can also be handy for those who want to scroll their feed on mute.
Users can add auto-captions from the editing page, and they also have an option to fine-tune these subtitles once they have been generated.
Auto captions will be first available in American English and Japanese, TikTok said, but will expand in the future to have more users from different regions covered “in the coming months.”
TikTok users can choose to turn off captions altogether by “opening the share panel, tapping the captions button, and setting captions to off.”
TikTok has been working on making its platform more accessible in the past to cover those with visual impairments.
Auto captions follow several accessibility-focused features rolled out on the popular short video platform. TikTok has several accessibility features, including text to speech, animated thumbnails, creator warning (notifies creators when they produce videos with effects that could trigger photosensitive epilepsy), and a photosensitivity feature that gives users a chance to skip photosensitive content.
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