Twitter is Winning Hearts With Its New Audio Translation Feature

Author: Team WH

Published On: 13-06-22

Last Updated on: 20-06-22

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

When it comes to accessing or consuming information on social media platforms, not many companies are mindful of what they offer to people from different spectrums of life. Twitter is going a step ahead with its plans to change the status quo and make the platform more accessible for people with disabilities.

In the latest developments, the social media company decided to expand its accessibility to everyone, keeping in mind the many challenges faced by the differently abled people. To help them better understand the platform, Twitter recently decided to translate charts into audio elements.

Using this feature, visually impaired people will be able to ‘listen’ to charts by translating data into pitched sounds. Additionally, it will also have a written description of the chart.

Why is there a need for audio translations on Twitter?

Twitter is one of the most widely used social media platforms, with over 217 million daily active users. The San Francisco-based company made headlines in April 2022 when Elon Musk acquired the social media platform.

With a growing number of daily users, Twitter is mindful of its global presence and continually striving to make the platform as accessible to everyone as possible.

Over the last year, Twitter has been working on adding more accessibility features like alt+text description display, audio captions on video clips, and a new ‘CC’ button on videos where captions are available.

Additionally, in 2020, Twitter also added a dedicated ‘+ALT’ button on posted images. This feature allowed users to add alt text descriptions to their shared images.

What can you expect from this feature?

Twitter is taking active steps to increase inclusivity and accessibility in the digital world. By making the app more accessible to the visually impaired, Twitter is on its way to bringing revolutionary changes.

Twitter officials tweeted the news about its Audio Translations feature by saying, “We’re introducing a new Accessibility feature for charts. It includes an audio chart feature allowing visually impaired people to listen to charts by translating numbers to pitched sounds, as well as a written description of the chart. Demo in the thread.”

Additionally, the team also tweeted a demo to give the audience an idea of what the feature entails. Here’s what it said.

We’re still rolling out, so here’s a demo video in case you don’t have access to the latest tweet analytics yet: pic.twitter.com/JidNFyPLh5

— Julius Elias Sohn (@juliussohn) June 7, 2022

As the social media platform gears to roll out the feature in full swing, we can’t wait to see what it has in store for people with special needs.