DIGITAL LIFE

YouTube will remove the caption feature, leaving the hearing impaired to view ships

On September 28, YouTube plans to disable community-based caption editing. It is explained that this feature is rarely used for its intended purpose, but contributes to spam and abuse. YouTube will focus on developing other tools. Authors can still add subtitles on their own or use automatic ones.
This decision caused natural discontent among people with hearing difficulties. They argue that limiting the functionality of subtitles will hinder the accessibility of the content and insist that the company try to correct the problems of the subtitles of the volunteers instead of eliminating them. Deaf author Rikki Poynter said on her channel in May that community captions were an accessibility tool that not only allowed deaf and hard of hearing people to watch videos with subtitles, but also helped creators who couldn't invest in subtitles. creature.
On Thursday, she tweeted that she was disappointed with YouTube's decision: “I spent a fucking hour telling them why the community's contribution is important to us. The deaf need not only more channels to obtain subtitles, but also for authors with disabilities who cannot do the job or who need to spend money to create them: that's what most of us are. They don't think about us. “
Many creators claim that they took advantage of this opportunity not only to better reach the target audience of deaf and hard of hearing people, but also to help translate their videos into other languages, increasing their popularity.
"It is a pity that YouTube is removing captions created by the community. I am afraid that, financially or practically, it is not appropriate to subtitle my videos in languages ​​other than English. So far, I have had volunteers to add subtitles in foreign languages," he wrote. Philosophy Tube on Twitter.
At the same time, author JT, whose YouTube channel has more than half a million subscribers, pointed out the disadvantages of the custom captioning feature last year, when viewers added offensive comments to popular creator videos.
YouTube told The Verge on Friday that it will provide a free six-month subscription to the Amara caption service for creators who have used the community feature in at least three videos in the past 60 days. They will be notified in the coming weeks. But even if content creators don't meet these conditions, they can still use Amara's tools, including a free subtitle editor.

AVnews