TikTok Users Can Now Turn On Closed Captions If Creators Don’t

TikTok announced today that it is making it easier for users to watch video content with automatically generated captions. This new upgraded feature was first introduced by the company in 2021 but had a number of flaws.

Before now, in order to use the caption option, creators had to enable auto-generated captions on their video before posting, therefore whether or not captions were available was dependent on the creator’s memory. Deaf and hard-of-hearing users frequently had to ask other users to switch on closed captions because if a creator neglected to activate captions, there was no way to add them after posting the post without deleting and beginning over. Along with creators, viewers now have the option to enable closed captioning thanks to this new upgrade. According to the company via a blog post, “Through these efforts, global content will become more accessible regardless of the language(s) you speak and where you are in the world.” 

Additionally, TikTok is launching a translation tool that will let users translate text stickers, descriptions, and captions for videos into their native tongue. Previously, viewers had to utilize third-party translation tools to decipher the contents of a video that appeared in a different language.

English, Portuguese, German, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish, and Turkish will be the first languages with auto-captions and translations. According to TikTok, more users will be able to access the services “in the coming months.”